US Government Loses First Climate Disaster Lawsuit

Home > Topics > Climate Change > US Government Loses First Climate Disaster Lawsuit

US Government Loses First Climate Disaster Lawsuit

by Susan Kraemer in Climate Change, Infrastructure, Politics

Hello there! If you are new here, you might want to subscribe to the RSS feed for updates on this topic.
Don't forget while you're here to get your copy of our free book on home water conservation.

In a case that is possibly precedent-setting, the US Government has just lost a landmark disaster-negligence lawsuit. The Army Corps of Engineers was sued for negligence in Hurricane Katrina flood protection in New Orleans… and lost.

Image: Lou Angeli Digital Katrina_Damage

Exhausted firefighters put out a blaze in downtown New Orleans after Katrina hits

While islands such as Tuvalu have sued the oil industry and the Bush administration for negligence in causing sea level rise, in this case the complaints focused only on negligence for levy repairs.

U.S. District Judge Stanwood Duval awarded the plaintiffs (six residents and one business) $720,000, but the government could eventually be forced to pay much more in damages in this one case. According to the NYT, the judge’s ruling gives more than 100,000 other individuals, businesses and government entities a legal precedent for claiming billions of dollars in damages.

This is the first time ever that the Army Corps of Engineers has been held liable for damages for a major catastrophe that was caused in part by its negligence. A similar suit after Hurricane Betsy flooding in 1965 failed.

The Army Corps has begun work on new protection, but stay tuned. As we head into a future filled with more climate-change related disasters, lawsuits against negligence by Federal Agencies will likely increase.

Posted on Dec 02, 2009

Tags:

flooding, hurricanes, Katrina, lawsuits, legal precedents, new orleans, The Army Corps of Engineers, Tuvalu

About the Author

Susan Kraemer

Susan Kraemer is a transplanted Kiwi retired from three design businesses she started from humble beginnings in N.Y.C. and California, who now lives in the Bay Area. She enjoys living and writing in a gorgeous house her husband designed and built years ago overlooking the San Francisco Bay in the East Bay Hills. She is thrilled to have just eliminated her electric bill through SunRun which makes it free to go solar, and she thinks you should look into getting $0 down solar too (in CA, AZ, CO, MA, PA, and NJ) She works to publicize the many great solutions to climate change we can find if we just put our minds to it.