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Appeals Court: Landowners Can Sue Over Global Warming Damages

By Joel Zand on October 29, 2009 | Last updated on March 21, 2019

A federal appeals court ruled that private Mississippi Gulf Coast residents and private landowners can sue an oil company and other defendants for global warming-related damages to their property.

Alleging a chain of causation between the defendants' substantial emissions and injury to their property, they maintain that the companies used their property so as to produce massive amounts of greenhouse gasses, which then injured both plaintiffs and the general public by contributing to global warming, caused the sea level rise and added to the ferocity of Hurricane Katrina.

The combined effects of the companies' actions, according to the plaintiffs, destroyed their private property, and contributed to the loss of their ability to use certain public properties near where they live.

You can read this novel opinion here:

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