The Impacts of High-Profile Litigation against Major Fossil Fuel Companies

Most high-profile climate change litigation against major fossil fuel companies have yet to be decided. These cases are legally difficult, insofar as they face several procedural and substantive doctrinal hurdles. Yet, even before litigants get to a trial on the merits and an eventual judgement, they use the cases to influence different audiences. This chapter considers the key characteristics of high-profile climate litigation brought against Carbon Majors, using a temporal framing that characterizes cases by whether (1) they look into the past (liability cases) or (2) they focus on the present and the future (fraud claims, disclosure claims, and human rights procedures). This chapter then introduces a discussion on how to assess some of the direct and indirect regulatory and financial impacts of such cases. Focusing on the indirect financial impacts, this chapter suggests that event studies could be applied to assess the potential impact of climate litigation on the stock prices of defendant companies.