Oil and power companies better watch out, because they are soon to be the next target of trial attorneys, much like the tobacco companies were in the 1990’s. According to Myles Allen, a physicist at Oxford University, “people adversely affected by climate change today are in a position to document and quantify their losses,” and that using the modeling he created, could use a positive finding to initiate litigation. Let’s put this into perspective, shall we? To this scientist, it seems practical to allow victims of a natural disaster to sue companies, engaged in a legal endeavor and selling products used by almost every person in the world (electricity and petrol), for their damages? Pinpointing which company actually “caused” the victims suffering is no matter to Allen, and it also didn’t seem to matter in the recent spate of lead paint lawsuits. In the lead paint litigation, attorneys filed against companies who may have never even produced lead based paint, but merely purchased a company who produced this legal product decades earlier. I would like to think that it is unlikely any damages would ever be paid to so-called victims as a result of these lawsuits, but defending them would still be a costly endeavor for these companies.
