Even as the Trump administration moves to block state and local climate liability efforts, states and municipalities continue to advance lawsuits seeking to hold fossil fuel companies liable for harms associated with climate...more
Welcome to the latest edition of the Sustainability Spotlight, your place to keep up with all the ESG action – federal and state enforcement, shareholder proposals and litigation, and state attorney general actions. This...more
Public companies can face significant liability based on past operations. While most industrial companies have long-term experience evaluating potential remediation obligations imposed by laws such as the federal...more
The amount of climate-related litigation has tripled in the past decade and includes greenwashing claims against some of the largest fossil fuel companies in the world. New York state and its localities have brought some of...more
Minnesota AG Keith Ellison has obtained an order denying in large part motions to dismiss filed by defendants ExxonMobil Corp., the American Petroleum Institute, Koch Industries, Inc., Flint Hills Resources LP, and Flint...more
On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court announced that it will not hear an appeal from certain major oil and gas companies to dismiss a lawsuit by the city of Honolulu seeking to hold the companies responsible for the impacts of...more
Stretching the Truth? Class Action Targeting Lululemon Claims Athleisure Brand "Greenwashing" Its Environmental Impact - Claims of greenwashing in the ESG space continue: A Florida class action lawsuit alleges that...more
In a significant legal maneuver with potentially far-reaching implications, California Attorney General Rob Bonta filed an amended complaint on June 10, 2024, to California’s high-profile lawsuit targeting five of the world’s...more
Greenwashing Beef Production - On February 28, New York State Attorney General (NYAG) Letitia James filed a lawsuit with the New York Supreme Court against meat processing company JBS USA for misleading the public about its...more
The Mintz Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) Working Group developed this ESG primer to provide an overview of the current state of affairs in the United States with respect to the ESG issues that businesses...more
On May 9, 2023, Greenpeace, fellow climate change activist group ReCommon and 12 Italian citizens from regions affected by impacts of climate change announced their intention to file a first-of-its-kind lawsuit in Italy...more
The federal review of a key transmission line to connect commercial-scale solar projects in Nevada to millions of households has been delayed by months over concerns about a likely route across a national monument designed to...more
The first half of 2022 saw significant U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) enforcement and rulemaking activity around environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investing. In its regulation of ESG investing, the...more
Climate Change Tort Litigation - Beginning in 2017, an array of state and local governments have pursued claims against major fossil fuel producers — particularly the major oil companies (Chevron, Exxon, BP, Shell, and...more
The European Parliament has now "endorsed labeling some gas and nuclear energy projects as 'green.'" This designation will now enable these energy projects to have "access to hundreds of billions of euros in cheap loans and...more