California v. General Motors, et al., 2007

California v. General Motors, et al., 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 68547 (N.D. Cal. 2007).

California sued six automakers and claimed that the companies’ greenhouse gas emissions contributed to climate change which amounted to a public nuisance under federal common law and, alternatively, public nuisance under California law.  The state sought joint and several liability against the automakers for “creating, contributing to, and maintaining a public nuisance.”  The plaintiffs requested monetary damages, attorney’s fees, and declaratory judgment for future expenses and damages caused to California by climate change.  

The defendants replied by seeking to dismiss the case on four grounds:  (1) the case raises nonjusticiable issues; (2) the complaint fails to state a valid claim under federal common law; (3) the complaint fails to state a valid claim under California law; and (4) the California public nuisance claim is preempted by federal law.  The court found the “threshold issue” to be whether the claim raises a nonjusticiable political question outside of the court’s jurisdiction.  

Nonjusticiable or political questions are those that are better answered by the legislative or the executive branches due to concerns with a court’s ability to identify the duty, the breach of the duty, or a remedy necessary to protect the right in question.  These cases touch on questions of public policy, foreign policy, and political issues that are deemed inappropriate for courts by the Constitution.  If a decision requires the court to create law in a way that too closely resembles legislating or carry out laws in a way that overly infringes on the discretion of the executive, the court refrains from reaching a decision on the issue due to a lack of jurisdiction.  

The court cited the six formulations which indicate the existence of nonjusticiability from Baker v. Carr.  A finding of any one of these formulations results in a nonjusticiability determination.  The court found overlap among the indicators, but ultimately found the third indicator, “the impossibility of deciding without an initial policy determination of a kind clearly for nonjudicial discretion,” to be the most relevant.  The court referred to Connecticut v. AEP and cited the case throughout its analysis.  The court ultimately concluded that balancing “the competing interests of reducing global warming emissions and the interests of advancing and preserving economic and industrial development” is a “policy determination to be made by the political branches.”  The Court also cited the political branches’ actions and inactions as well as comprehensive legislative schemes under the Clean Air Act and Energy Policy and Conservation Act as further support for a finding of nonjudicial discretion in reference to the federal common law nuisance claim.  

The court distinguished the case from Massachusetts v. EPA.  First, the court noted that the Supreme Court allowed standing based on the “notion that certain constitutional principles of sovereignty afford the States ‘special solitude’ to seek judicial review of decisions by federal regulatory agencies because the States have ‘surrendered’ to the government their right to engage in certain forms of regulations.”  Second, the Court noted that the Supreme Court determined that the federal government through the EPA has the authority to regulate carbon dioxide.  Accordingly, the court reasoned that the Supreme Court allowed standing in Mass. v. EPA so that the state could challenge a policy determination as a “procedural right” to challenge an EPA administrative decision as opposed to an action in tort against private parties.  Because this case was filed against private parties, Mass. v. EPA does not offer such a procedural right for standing in this case.  

The court also found two other formulations from Baker v. Carr that were relevant to a finding of a non-justiciable political question.  For its second nonjusticiable federal question determination, the court analyzed the formulation which requires the court to determine “whether the issues before the court implicate a textually demonstrable constitutional commitment to the political branches of government.”  The court determined that the textual commitments of interstate commerce and the foreign policy to the political branches were implicated by the plaintiff’s attempt to compel damages from the defendants’ lawful worldwide sales.  Potential commerce implications could result from greenhouse gas emitters being subject to a “judicially-created tort for doing nothing more than lawfully engaging in their respective spheres of commerce with those States.”  Foreign policy implications arose from the political branches weighing in on the issue and deciding to refrain from any unilateral commitment to reducing emissions.  Because of this deliberate inaction, the court reasoned that imposing damages on emissions would result in a conflict with the political branches constitutional commitment to foreign policy issues.  For these additional reasons, the federal common law global warming nuisance tort is a nonjusticiable political question.

The court’s final Baker v. Carr indicator requires a court to decide “whether there are judicially discoverable or manageable standards available to resolve the question before it.”  The court found that determining what is “an unreasonable contribution to the sum of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere, or determining who should bear the costs” would require a policy decision due to a lack of an existing “legal framework or applicable standards.”  Because of this indicator and the two discussed above, the court found a nonjusticiable political question and granted the motion to dismiss the federal common law global warming nuisance claim.

The court also distinguished previous transboundary nuisance cases on grounds that the remedies sought were to enjoin the nuisance rather than monetary damages, and that there is no guidance for assessing plaintiff’s contribution to warming.

The court did not reach a conclusion as to whether a federal common law nuisance claim exists due to the finding of a nonjusticiable federal question.  The court also found the state public nuisance claim to be precluded from jurisdiction because the nonjusticiability finding left the plaintiffs without a sufficiently substantial federal claim necessary to exercise supplemental jurisdiction over state law claims.  The plaintiffs have filed an appeal with the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

View the case document here [1]