The daughter of a Seattle woman, Juliana Leon, who died during the 2021 Pacific Northwest heat wave, today brought a wrongful death suit alleging that Big Oil companies negligently caused her mother’s death. Aaron Regunberg, accountability project director for Public Citizen’s Climate Program, issued the following statement:
“Lethal climate disasters are the foreseeable, and foreseen, consequences of specific actions by fossil fuel corporations, CEOs, and boards of directors. They caused the climate crisis and deceived the public about the dangerousness of their products in order to block and delay solutions that could prevent heat deaths like Juliana’s. These fossil fuel actors should be held accountable to the victims of their lethal conduct, and this wrongful death suit provides a compelling new approach for climate victims moving forward…