{"id":1348,"date":"2026-08-06T15:08:03","date_gmt":"2026-08-06T15:08:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/smartmovinghome.com\/?p=1348"},"modified":"2026-08-06T15:08:03","modified_gmt":"2026-08-06T15:08:03","slug":"juliana-leon-died-in-a-climate-linked-heat-wave-her-daughter-is-suing-big-oil","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/smartmovinghome.com\/?p=1348","title":{"rendered":"Juliana Leon Died in a Climate-Linked Heat Wave. Her Daughter Is Suing Big Oil."},"content":{"rendered":"
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Part of the Series<\/h4>\n<\/header>\n
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Covering Climate Now<\/h5>\n<\/article>\n<\/section>\n
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Truthout is a vital news source and a living history of political struggle. If you think our work is valuable, <\/span><\/i>support us with a donation<\/span><\/i> of any size.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Read more You Can\u2019t Drink Data: Native Communities Are Resisting the AI Death Cycle<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Can a lawsuit hold fossil fuel companies responsible for climate-change and its impact? That\u2019s the question a Washington State-based woman is hoping to answer. Misti Leon is suing several big oil companies \u2014 including ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP, and others \u2014 over the 2021 heat-related death of her mother Juliana, who died during a record-breaking heat dome over the Pacific Northwest. <\/p>\n

For years, individuals and institutions have attempted to protect human lives from climate change using litigation. In 2015, a public interest law firm called Our Children\u2019s Trust, representing nearly two dozen young people sued the federal government for failing to protect them against the impending impacts of fossil fuel emissions. Courts dragged their feet for more than a decade only for the case to reach a dead end at the United States Supreme Court in 2025.<\/p>\n

Leon\u2019s civil suit is significant, not just because a Washington judge unexpectedly cleared the case for discovery and trial, but because Leon can directly link her mother\u2019s death to climate change. Scientists that the 2021 heat dome was, in the words of one research paper, \u201cvirtually impossible without human-caused climate change.\u201d It\u2019s about a crime that already occurred instead of hypothetical harm.<\/p>\n

\u201cMs. Leon\u2019s case is unique in that it is the first of its kind to seek to hold big oil companies accountable for their role in an individual\u2019s death in a climate-related disaster,\u201d Mike Meno, communications director at the Center for Climate Integrity, a nonprofit advocacy group that supports community efforts to hold Big Oil accountable for climate change, explained in an interview.<\/p>\n

Juliana Leon was one of an estimated 1,200 people across the Pacific Northwest whose deaths were linked to the heat dome. \u201cShe was found unresponsive in her car,\u201d said Meno. \u201cThe medical examiner determined that her death was caused by hyperthermia,\u201d a condition that is the opposite of the more well-known cold-related condition of hypothermia. <\/p>\n

Hyperthermia-related deaths have sharply risen over the past decade, a predictable outcome of fossil fuel emissions. Oil companies such as Exxon have long been aware of the devastating impacts their product would have on the climate. \u201cMajor oil and gas companies decades ago knew, their own scientists told them internally, that if we kept burning fossil fuels, it would lead to, in the words of one internal Exxon document, potentially catastrophic events, just like the 2021 Pacific Northwest heat dome,\u201d said Meno. <\/p>\n

Big Oil\u2019s failure to act on this information has drawn comparisons to Big Tobacco. Companies like Philip Morris knew about the impacts of cigarette smoking on human health and kept it secret for years. Since that information was made public, individuals suffering from their addictive products have sued repeatedly and won. <\/p>\n

A major lawsuit brought by state attorneys general culminated in 1998 in what became known as the Master Settlement Agreement, where dozens of tobacco companies settled to the tune of billions of dollars for public health. Notably, the federal government also sued tobacco companies for violations of racketeering laws over their deception.<\/p>\n

Yet while individuals and states are taking action in the case of oil companies, the federal government clearly has no interest in holding Big Oil accountable for climate change. Instead, President Donald Trump says he wants the Justice Department to investigate fossil fuel companies for raising<\/em> oil prices in the wake of the Iran war. This appears to be a classic case of deflection, given that a majority of voters blame Trump for price increases at the pump. He isn\u2019t interested in holding companies accountable for climate change; he\u2019s upset they made it harder for people to consume oil. Moreover, his administration is suing states for trying to enforce environmental regulations aimed at oil companies.<\/p>\n

In addition to keeping their own research secret, fossil fuel companies spent years sowing doubt over the cause-and-effect relationship between greenhouse gases and a warming climate. \u201cWhat that decades-long deception campaign did is it stole a generation\u2019s worth of time when action could\u2019ve been taken, and we could\u2019ve averted the worst of some of these climate disasters,\u201d said Meno. <\/p>\n

Read more Pentagon Seemingly Caused a Medevac Plane to Crash, Killing Everyone Onboard<\/a><\/p>\n

This year, more extreme weather records are expected to be broken as climate change intensifies. The first half of 2026 was the third-warmest half-year on record. An El Ni\u00f1o phenomenon developing this year is expected to be one of the strongest in modern history. <\/p>\n

Whether or not the Trump administration admits that the climate is changing, Americans know it is. \u201cAnyone of a certain age who can look back over enough time just knows, as a matter of common sense, that the climate we are all living in today is not what we had a few years ago,\u201d said Meno.<\/p>\n

The industry knows it too \u2014 and, according to Meno, oil companies \u201care in absolute panic mode, fighting tooth and nail to escape accountability.\u201d Leon\u2019s lawsuit is hardly the only one they fear. Numerous states, counties, cities, and tribal governments are Big Oil, and making headway. <\/p>\n

Meno explained that companies have \u201cbeen pleading with the U.S. Supreme Court to take up one of these cases for years.\u201d The Supreme Court finally agreed to review a case in Colorado where that state\u2019s supreme court in May 2025 ruled the City of Boulder and Boulder County could move forward with discovery and trial in their suit against ExxonMobil and Suncor. <\/p>\n

Not content with leaving it to the U.S. Supreme Court, Big Oil has been lobbying Congress to grant the industry immunity over its role in climate change \u2014 and conservative lawmakers have complied. In April, Wyoming Rep. Harriet Hageman and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz introduced the \u201cStop Climate Shakedowns Act of 2026.\u201d <\/p>\n

If Congress were to pass the bill, according to Meno, it \u201cwould be a truly unprecedented legal shield that would strip the public of their right to hold these corporations accountable for the harm they\u2019ve caused.\u201d Meno\u2019s Center for Climate Integrity is urging members of the public to demand their elected representatives vote against Hageman and Cruz\u2019s bill.<\/p>\n

Big Oil says it deserves immunity because it shouldn\u2019t be penalized for giving the public what it wants. In a joint statement, American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers President and CEO Chet Thompson and American Petroleum Institute President and CEO Mike Sommers said: \u201cThese efforts to retroactively penalize companies for lawfully meeting consumer demand are misguided and counterproductive.\u201d<\/p>\n

What they didn\u2019t say is that they have worked for years to prevent fair competition from renewables. It\u2019s why the state of Michigan launched an antitrust lawsuit against ExxonMobil, BP, Chevron, and others because they acted \u201cas a cartel \u2026 to forestall meaningful competition from renewable energy in order to maintain their dominance.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fossil fuel companies have long known their products are deadly, kept it secret, unfairly ensured their dominance, then argued that they ought not to be sued for delivering a product the public wants. Now, as climate-related deaths stack up, the industry claims it isn\u2019t responsible. Misti Leon, whose mother might be alive today if governments and courts had reined in Big Oil, told The New York Times<\/em>: \u201cI never would have in a million years guessed that a heat dome and climate change would be what killed my mother and what took her from me. There\u2019s no way to comprehend that and to kind of even rationalize it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more Beshear Rejects Notion That a \u201cDeadline\u201d Has Passed to Replace McConnell<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This case is reportedly the first to hold Big Oil accountable for an individual\u2019s death in a climate-related disaster.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1347,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1348","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"yoast_head":"\nJuliana Leon Died in a Climate-Linked Heat Wave. Her Daughter Is Suing Big Oil. - Smart Moving Home<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/smartmovinghome.com\/?p=1348\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Juliana Leon Died in a Climate-Linked Heat Wave. 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