The daughter of a Seattle woman who died during the 2021 Pacific Northwest heat wave has filed the first wrongful death lawsuit directly linking fossil fuel companies to a person's climate-related death.
Misti Leon sues seven oil and gas companies, including ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell and BP, alleging that they caused the death of Juliana Leon's mother from hyperthermia on June 28, 2021, when temperatures reached 44 degrees Celsius.
The lawsuit claims that the companies created a “fossil fuel-dependent economy” that resulted in “more frequent and devastating weather disasters and predictable loss of human life.”
A study by Attribution Science concludes that the 2021 heat wave would have been “essentially impossible” without human-caused climate change and would have been at least 150 times rarer without global warming.
The case seeks damages and funding for a public education campaign about the role of fossil fuels in global warming.
Although the press releases will range from very select to rare, I said I'd pass...because sometimes the editors hide.
