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Katrina Victims Can Now Sue Over AGW
Written By : William Teach

You knew it had to come sooner or later

For years, leading plaintiffs’ lawyers have promised a legal assault on industrial America for contributing to global warming.

So far, the trial bar has had limited success. The hurdles to such suits are pretty obvious: How do you apportion fault and link particular plaintiffs’ injuries to the pollution emitted by a particular group of defendants?

Today, though, plaintiffs’ lawyers may be a gloating a bit, after a favorable ruling Friday from the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans, which is regarded as one of the more conservative circuit courts in the country.  Here’s a link to the ruling.

The suit was brought by landowners in Mississippi, who claim that oil and coal companies emitted greenhouse gasses that contributed to global warming that, in turn, caused a rise in sea levels, adding to Hurricane Katrina’s ferocity. (See photo of Bay St. Louis, Miss., after the storm.)

For a nice overview of the ruling, and its significance in the climate change battle, check out this blog post by J. Russell Jackson, a Skadden Arps partner who specializes in mass tort litigation. The post likens the Katrina plaintiffs’ claims, which set out a chain of causation, to the litigation equivalent of “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.”

At first blush, this looks like just another meaningless and hysterical law suit, but, think about this for a moment. The plaintiffs are going to have to provide actual, factual, relevant, and meaningful evidence, and actually debate the merits of man made global warming in the public eye. The defense will be able to provide relevant, factual, and meaningful evidence, such as the “no warming in the last 10 years” information, all in the public eye. If the climahysteric plaintiffs lose, this could be a major slap in the face for the AGW movement.

Al Gore has been challenged to debate after debate after debate, yet, refuses to engage in one. The Washington Posts’ Andrew Freeman chickened out on a debate with Climate Depot’s Marc Morano. The US Chamber of Commerce called for a climate trial, and, rather than anyone taking them up on it, they were demonized. Lord Monckton has offered to debate any climate alarmist, and none will take him on. Perhaps this trial will shed some reality on the situation, and finally put to rest the notion of anthropogenic climate change. Until they bring it back up in a few years, of course.

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  • BIG

    We can use a Scopes Monkey trial on AGW. I say bring it on.

  • Mike_M

    This will never go to trial. It is a flimsy blackmail attempt, where the prosecution will seek a tidy sum of money in a settlement (millions for the lawyers, probably a few thousand for the actual victims) with the implication that a trial verdict against "industrial America" would be much bigger and ruinous.

    If the defendants don't play along, which I doubt they will, the suit will quietly be dropped and buried by the media. Pathetic liberal trickery at its finest, and a great illustration of why the vast majority of trial lawyers are Democrats.

  • tomw

    They can't take it to trial. It has been 'peer reviewed' and thus beyond the reach of us mere mortals. We are too stupid to realize that our 'betters' have discerned the meanings of the chickens' entrails and 'know' that we are the cause of all climate change.

    /sarc

    What I want to know is why we didn't have 'runaway' 'climate change' back when the CO2 concentration was soooo much higher than it is today. If it didn't happen then, why would it happen now? But, I am not a 'peer', so nevermind.

    tom

  • RWNReader2

    This is the kind of bullshit that makes my blood boil, because this kind of crap is why the federal government drags its feet on funding for coastal restoration.

    Fifteen years ago we came up with a great plan to save the marsh using fresh water diversion projects. Then some greedy lawyer got the idea to round up some illiterate oyster fishermen and sue, claiming that fresh water from these installations flowed into the gulf, then turned north, turned up a canal, travelled against the natural flow for 50 miles, and destroyed oyster beds on the opposite side of a levee. It was a complete bullshit case, but some judge awarded the oystermen a $50 million settlement, and the projects came to a screeching halt. Meanwhile, the marsh continues to wash away, making New Orleans more and more vulnerable to storms, and then came Katrina.

    Tort sanity NOW!

  • http://conservativebootcamp.com martinhale

    Tort sanity NOW!

    Posted by RWNReader2

    2009-10-20 10:46:56

    Nice sentiment. Too bad virtually every legislative body in this country is controlled by lawyers, who will never, ever pass anything remotely resembling tort reform.

  • RWNReader2

    Posted by martinhale

    2009-10-20 11:17:45

    I'm reminded of that line in one of those cheesy Sylvester Stalone movies (Judge Dred??) where he finds himself in the future and marvelling at how easy it is to put away bad guys, whereupon he's told "Justice moves quickly since we made lawyers illegal."

  • Realpolitik

    Everything old is new again.

    As Shakespeare famously said "The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers". – (Henry VI Part II Act IV, Scene II).

  • MediumHeadBoy

    This is surely the first time I've ever agreed with Realidiot. But he'll still have to be right one more time today to be as accurate as a broken clock.

  • Realpolitik

    he'll still have to be right one more time today to be as accurate as a broken clock.

    Posted by MediumHeadBoy

    2009-10-20 12:56:44

    Et, tu, Brute!

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