Two days of high-stakes argument in a Portland courtroom this week put Big Oil and Multnomah County on a collision course over who should pay for the deadly 2021 heat dome and its long tail of costs.
Oil industry lawyers told a Multnomah County judge that federal law leaves no room for the county’s state-level claims. They urged the court to toss out or at least pause the case, insisting that federal statutes and precedent preempt local efforts to hold companies liable. On the line is a sweeping claim for billions of dollars tied to heat-related deaths, emergency response and a proposed weatherproofing fund that county officials peg at about $50 billion.
On Wednesday and Thursday, attorneys for the defendants hammered on that preemption theory in Multnomah County Circuit Court, arguing that state tort claims cannot go forward when federal law controls, according to The New York Times. County lawyers pushed back, saying the case is about decades of deception and failures to warn that left local officials flat-footed when the 2021 heat dome hit. The hearing was widely watched as an early test of whether the lawsuit survives procedural attacks or gets shaved down before a jury ever hears it…