Big Dogs Weblog

Stupidest Idea- Ever

by Blake on Oct 20, 2009 at 12:27 Political

Well, the Fifth Circuit Court has opened the door for victims of Hurricane Katrina to sue possible emitters of “greenhouse” gases for their plight- never mind that many of them have moved elsewhere and gotten on with their lives.
Also, do not mind the fact that “Global Warming”, ostensibly the grounds for suit, is still hotly contested as real or not. If you ask Al Gore, who stands to make oodles of money from all his green projects,  AGW (anthropogenic global warming) is a danger to us all.

If you ask others, not so much- especially when many of the people who previously had touted AGW now have had to reverse themselves and admit that the earth has actually cooled in the last ten years.

That aside, these lawyers (yes- there will be  lawyers) are going to go after any and all deep pockets industries they can think of in a bid to get lots of money- not necessarily for their clients, but certainly for themselves. Gotta look out for number one, right? They are doing this even when it is hard to prove, A)- that these specific industries have in fact specifically contributed to AGW, and B)- that this alleged AGW aggravation spawned Hurricane Katrina, or Rita, or any other storm. After this year, with no hurricanes making landfall, and no damage from these storms, have they a case? I don’t think so.

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. 

blogs.wsj.com

There was no rise in sea levels- that is plain bull- what happened was simple storm surge. Sure storm surge sucks, but that is life plain and simple.

In the 1880s, there was a town on Matagorda Bay in Texas called Indianola. It was a nice town, poised to become a hub of major commerce, having both a port, and a railroad that ran through the town. 

A Hurricane came through, a pretty strong one by all accounts (they had no way to measure the strength of hurricanes back then), and hit Indianola head on, literally wiping it off of the face of the earth, leaving only the railroad tracks. People who survived, did so by climbing trees to escape the storm surge, which went inland as far as twenty miles. 

When the survivors climbed down, assessed the situation and began to clean up and bury the dead, they vowed to rebuild. After all, they reasoned, that was a freak storm, and would never happen again.

So they rebuilt, better than before, and in less than a year, had their town up and running again (all without any federal assistance). 

That next year, another major Hurricane came and wiped them out again, this time destroying even the railroad tracks. Now, there is no port- there are no railroad tracks. Indianola is just a sleepy little bait camp stopover now, and that will be all it ever is again.

But you see, this is before Global Warming, before even the industrial age had much of any effect- before oil and gas, there was just coal, and that was not even in great use here.

So what is the broader significance of the ruling? We checked in with Jackson for his take.

At a minimum, he says, the ruling will invite more climate-change litigation in the future.

“With this decision,” he says, “you are now pretty well assured of seeing others file these kinds of claims.”

Last month, he notes, the Second Circuit held that states and municipalities had standing to sue to impose on caps on certain companies’ greenhouse gas emissions.  Here’s an overview from Skadden of that ruling.

In contrast with the Second Circuit, the Fifth Circuit case may be particularly inviting to tort lawyers, since the New Orleans court opened the door to “a case by private litigants, a class action, seeking an enormous amount of damages,” Jackson says.

Still, Jackson notes, the Katrina case is at an early stage, and the Fifth Circuit’s ruling “does not mean there is enough causation evidence to survive a motion to dismiss.”

blogs.wsj.com

Lawyers sure do stick together, don’t they- and they can smell money, even when they have to make up “facts” to suit their case. The people of New Orleans deserve to be able to look ahead and get on with their lives, not stuck in a rut, waiting to see if some lawyer can get them a payday. Stuck in a courtroom, they will never be able to look ahead. The only people who will get rich off of this ridiculous set of claims will be the lawyers, as the case will be bounced from court to court faster than Serena Williams can volley a tennis ball.

This really is The Stupidest Idea- Ever.

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Tags: AGW, al gore, lawyers, lies, stupidity