Plaintiffs in Native Village of Kivalina v. Exxon Corp, one of several tort-based lawsuits filed against major energy companies seeking damages related to climate change, are appealing a district court’s dismissal of their lawsuit to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit .

In Kivalina, a small, primarily-Eskimo village situated on a barrier reef that is disappearing from Alaska’s northwest coast — allegedly due to rising water levels — is seeking damages from 19 of the country’s biggest oil companies for their alleged contribution to global warming, which the village describes as “a nuisance that is causing severe harms to Kivalina.” In addition, the village claims that several of these companies were engaged in a civil conspiracy, working in “agreement with each other to mislead the public with respect to the science of global warming and to delay public awareness of the issue – so that they could continue contributing to, maintaining and/or creating the nuisance without demands from the public that they change their behavior as a condition of further buying their products.”  In a ruling dated Sept. 30, Judge Saundra Brown Armstrong of the Northern District of California dismissed the case, on political question and standing grounds.  As we recently reported, two similar “nuisance” cases, both of which were also dismissed on standing and political question grounds at the district court level, were reinstated on appeal – possibly boding well for the plaintiffs in Kivalina.

The 9th Circuit’s docket number for Kivalina is 09-17490. Stay tuned to Warming Law for further developments in this case.