I’m a plaintiff’s trial lawyer, representing claimants in disputes decided in the civil justice system. That’s not to say I have a problem with defense lawyers. My wife is one, and she’s the love of my life.
I have a servant’s heart, and I have spent the last 30 years representing people who have been gravely harmed or, in many instances, killed or egregiously cheated as a result of the misconduct of others—usually large corporations.
I am an advocate for my clients, but also for the American civil justice system, and I have been active in trial lawyer organizations, whose purpose is to promote the right to trial by jury on behalf of every American, rich, or poor.
I’ve spent 30 years handling environmental poisoning and mass tort cases of various types. In that work, I have represented individuals as well as whole communities.
Several months ago, I was approached by a potential client to determine whether or not their legal rights had been violated. This was about the devastating heat event that occurred in late June 2021 lasting for a full week in Multnomah County, Oregon.
Jeffrey B. Simon
It was scorched by the most extreme heat event in its history. For several consecutive days and nights, a heat dome—sometimes called an extreme heat event or a blocking event—boiled the county. For over three consecutive days, there were high temperatures of 108 degrees, 112 degrees, and 116 degrees.
This event had a devastating impact, as 69 people died of heat stroke, many of them in their homes. The cable car cables melted and there was tremendous damage to infrastructure.
In the aftermath, but before we filed a claim on behalf of the county, several researchers, climate scientists, and statisticians investigated whether or not this heat dome was simply an unfortunate natural event or something else.
It was determined that it was an unnatural event, caused as a result of carbon pollution.
The primary contributor to that pollution was from fossil fuels which had accumulated in the atmosphere to such a great degree that it super-heated the surface temperature of the earth and threw regional weather off balance.
According to other peer-reviewed published studies, the companies that we sued understood more than 50 years ago that the carbon emissions from the fossil fuel products they sold were polluting the atmosphere at a high rate and would cause the surface temperature of the earth to substantially rise.
They correctly predicted that by the year 2000, the increase in global temperature from their polluting products would cause appreciable changes in regional weather and that no later than the year 2030, some of the weather changes would be catastrophic.
We filed a lawsuit in June 2023, asking for $1.15 billion.
Enormous harm was caused to this community. Millions of dollars were spent as a result of the loss of life, the property damage, the provision of cooling centers, and all the emergency health services that were necessary for a population where 40 percent of the residents don’t have air cooling systems in their home because they never before needed them.
I believe that the defendants who caused this harm should pay for it. This community was never prepared, nor should they have been, for an extreme heat event. It was not foreseeable to them, but we contend it was foreseeable to the defendants.
These extreme heat events will reoccur because of carbon pollution in the atmosphere. It will cost billions of dollars to design and build the infrastructure necessary to withstand this extreme heat, to provide cooling units and heat shelter for all inhabitants who otherwise can’t afford them, and to implement the emergency response systems necessary to save lives.
This industrially caused environmental disease will cause enormous harm, both in terms of human suffering, as well as economic burden. We’re using the civil justice system for its traditional purpose, which is not to change regulatory policy, but simply to cause a wrongdoer to pay for the harm that they have caused, and that their activities will continue to cause.
Jeffrey B. Simon is a national award-winning trial attorney and Texas super lawyer. Simon is also an analyst on Dan Abrams and Law & Crime Network and the author of the critically acclaimed book, Last Rights. Simon is a founding partner of Simon Greenstone Panatier, PC.
All views expressed in this article are the author’s own.
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