{"id":787,"date":"2011-05-10T11:05:13","date_gmt":"2011-05-10T16:05:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/climatechange\/?p=787"},"modified":"2012-01-31T15:11:38","modified_gmt":"2012-01-31T20:11:38","slug":"a-novel-use-of-the-public-trust-doctrine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/climatechange\/2011\/05\/10\/a-novel-use-of-the-public-trust-doctrine\/","title":{"rendered":"A Novel Use of the Public Trust Doctrine"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;\" class=\"sharethis-inline-share-buttons\" ><\/div><p>On May 4, 2011 a group of five teenager plaintiffs, together with two non-profit environmental groups, filed suit against the federal government in the Federal District Court for the Northern District of California, in San Francisco. The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.law.columbia.edu\/null\/download?&amp;exclusive=filemgr.download&amp;file_id=542618\" target=\"_blank\">complaint<\/a> (PDF), seeking declaratory and injunctive relief, contains only one cause of action: violation of the Public Trust Doctrine.<\/p>\n<p>The Public Trust Doctrine, dating back to ancient Rome, imposes a common law duty on a sovereign trustee, in this case the U.S. Government, to \u201chold vital natural resources in \u2018trust\u2019 for present and future generations. . . . to protect [. . .] trust assets from damage or loss, and not to use [. . .] trust assets in\u00a0 a manner that causes injury to the trust beneficiaries, present and future.\u201d Complaint at para. 63.<\/p>\n<p>Plaintiffs maintain that the \u201catmosphere, including the air, is one of the crucial assets protected by the Public Trust Doctrine,\u201d id., and that the defendant federal agencies \u201chave allowed, facilitated, and contributed to the waste of trust assets, [. . .] including the atmosphere, by allowing it to become polluted with high levels of human-caused CO<sub>2<\/sub>.\u201d Complaint at para. 139.<\/p>\n<p>While this particular complaint was filed in federal court and alleges violations of the federal common law Public Trust Doctrine, the non-profit coalition <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ourchildrenstrust.org\/\" target=\"_blank\">Our Children\u2019s Trust<\/a> is filing <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ourchildrenstrust.org\/legal-action\/lawsuits\" target=\"_blank\">similar suits<\/a> against states around the country, alleging violations of state common law. Notably, federal and state common law on the doctrine are not coextensive.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, as CCCL Director Professor Michael Gerrard explained in a recent <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2011\/05\/05\/science\/earth\/05climate.html\" target=\"_blank\">New York Times article<\/a> on the topic, \u201ccourts that hear these cases will be heavily influenced by the Supreme Court\u2019s opinion\u201d in the pending case of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.scotusblog.com\/case-files\/cases\/american-electric-power-co-inc-v-connecticut-2\" target=\"_blank\">American Electric Power v. Connecticut<\/a>. But, Professor Gerrard added, \u201cby filing such lawsuits, environmentalists were \u2018trying to use all available options in view of the failure of Congress\u2019 to act on greenhouse gas emissions.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Even in light of the likely decision in <span style=\"text-decoration: underline\">AEP<\/span>, all it takes to keep the issue alive is for one state court to recognize a new climate change-related cause of action under the Public Trust Doctrine. In filing cases in states around the country, the plaintiffs are hoping to find a judge willing to do just that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On May 4, 2011 a group of five teenager plaintiffs, together with two non-profit environmental groups, filed suit against the federal government in the Federal District Court for the Northern District of California, in San Francisco. The complaint (PDF), seeking declaratory and injunctive relief, contains only one cause of action: violation of the Public Trust [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":580,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[5674,9430,835],"class_list":{"0":"post-787","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"tag-common-law","8":"tag-litigation","9":"tag-state-activity","10":"czr-hentry"},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>A Novel Use of the Public Trust Doctrine - Climate Law Blog<\/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:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/climatechange\/2011\/05\/10\/a-novel-use-of-the-public-trust-doctrine\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A Novel Use of the Public Trust Doctrine - Climate Law Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"On May 4, 2011 a group of five teenager plaintiffs, together with two non-profit environmental groups, filed suit against the federal government in the Federal District Court for the Northern District of California, in San Francisco. 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