A proposed class action filed in Washington last month is the latest effort to expand climate liability beyond its already contested limits – an undertaking now complicated by heightened scrutiny of the law firm bringing the case.
Filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington, the proposed class action asks the judiciary to assign responsibility for rising homeowners insurance premiums to major energy companies, despite the layered processes that govern insurance pricing.
By framing the case as a sweeping federal class action – covering any individual who owns property in Washington state and has purchased homeowners insurance since 2017 – the plaintiffs lump together many different insurance situations into a single legal claim. This tactic increases pressure on defendants to settle, while avoiding difficult questions about how far tort law should go.
The lawsuit is being pursued by Hagens Berman, a firm now facing heightened scrutiny over its broader legal conduct.
Earlier this month, a federal judge referred the firm and its managing partner to the U.S. Department of Justice for investigation, citing findings of “misconduct bordering on the criminal” in how the firm handled decades-old drug cases, Fox News reports:
“[A federal judge] noted in an order on Dec. 2 that a court-appointed lawyer, known as a special master, found Hagens Berman engaged in a yearslong effort to bring ‘fraudulent’ complaints in the case in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. Hagens Berman also obstructed discovery and ‘doctored evidence,’ the special master found. The order noted that the firm’s apparent ‘misconduct bordering on criminal’ warranted the DOJ’s involvement.”
Taken together, the Pennsylvania findings and the Washington filing exhibit a clear a pattern of aggressive and legally dubious tactics in pursuit of expansive climate liability.
Reviving An Old Theory Likely Means Another Loss
For years, climate plaintiffs have worked deliberately to avoid both federal jurisdiction and class-action status, recognizing that climate claims tend to falter once subjected to federal judicial scrutiny.
That risk materialized in a climate suit brought by the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Association in 2018. In 2023, a federal judge in California ruled that the case belonged in federal court – echoing arguments long advanced by energy companies that climate change claims present inherently federal questions. The court also found that the lawsuit effectively operated as a class action, triggering federal jurisdiction on that basis as well.
Back in 2018, the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Association (PCFFA) sued 30 energy companies, alleging their operations caused climate change, which has damaged the ocean and forced closures of several crab fisheries on the west coast.
Shortly thereafter, the plaintiffs – represented by climate litigation mainstay Sher Edling – voluntarily dismissed the case in its entirety.
That outcome was not isolated. Another climate-related class action, filed by a group of Puerto Rico municipalities, was also dismissed by a federal judge this year, reinforcing the same lesson: once climate claims are combined with class-action theories and subjected to federal scrutiny, they rarely survive.
Against that backdrop, the Washington homeowners’ decision to pursue a federal class action appears less innovative than ill-advised.
New Case, Old Faces
Both the legal strategy and the lawyers themselves are a blast from the past. The Washington homeowners retained Hagens Berman, the firm that originally represented San Francisco and Oakland in their 2017 climate lawsuit. That representation ended after a series of losses in federal court, when the cities replaced Hagens Berman with Sher Edling. Hagens Berman also represented King County in its climate lawsuit, which was voluntarily dismissed after defendants filed motions to dismiss.
Several of the individuals associated with the firm are also long-standing figures in climate lawfare. One of Hagens Berman’s former attorneys, Matt Pawa, played a central role in early efforts to expand climate litigation. In 2016, he met with Democratic state attorneys general in an effort to encourage investigations into energy companies and later communicated with billionaire environmental activist Tom Steyer regarding climate litigation strategy.
As in prior climate cases, the firm has drawn on the legal campaign against Big Tobacco in an effort to apply that model to the energy industry – an analogy that has been challenged in congressional hearings.
The complaint also relies on another old face in climate litigation: Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI). It directly quotes Whitehouse’s public statements linking climate change to rising homeowners insurance costs – a theory he has repeatedly attempted advance in Congress, but one that has gained limited legislative traction.
Billionaire backing, coordination with attorneys general, and recycled legal playbooks are not new features of climate litigation. This case follows a well-worn path.
Bottom line: Washington’s newly filed federal class action against major energy companies breaks little new ground. It repackages familiar climate liability theories through a different procedural lens, advancing the same claims that have repeatedly failed in court. Expanding litigation strategies has not addressed rising consumer costs – and it is unlikely to do so here. If affordability is the concern, access to reliable and affordable energy remains the more direct solution.
