FIRST ON FOX: Former Attorney General William Barr fired off a letter Thursday to Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill, warning her against backing dozens of multimillion-dollar lawsuits targeting oil companies like Chevron – which was recently ordered to pay a coastal parish $745 million for decades-old actions by a now-defunct subsidiary.
In his letter to Murrill, Barr referenced Republican Gov. Jeff Landry’s reported support for several lawsuits in which parishes – Louisiana’s version of counties – and powerful attorneys are seeking tens of billions in culpability tied to land loss.
“As you know, the Trump administration is committed to unleashing America’s domestic energy production,” Barr wrote, citing President Donald Trump’s executive order “Protecting American Energy from State Overreach.”
The recent case in Plaquemines Parish against Chevron, Barr argued, is the first example of Louisiana “subjecting energy producers to arbitrary or excessive fines through retroactive penalties cast as damages for alleged environmental harm.”
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That case focused on allegations that Texaco – which was dissolved into Chevron around the turn of the century – was culpable for the effects of coastal erosion due to its pre-1980s energy development projects.
“We are concerned Louisiana is in the process of doing just this by its acquiescence to the wave of 43 lawsuits devised by prominent plaintiff’s lawyers against American oil and gas companies on behalf of Louisiana’s coastal parishes,” Barr said.
After the ruling, Chevron lead trial attorney Mike Phillips told Fox News Digital the company plans to appeal the verdict to address “numerous legal errors that led to this unjust result.”
“This verdict is just one step in the process to establish that the 1980 law does not apply to conduct that occurred decades before the law was enacted. Chevron is not the cause of the land loss occurring in Breton Sound,” Phillips said.
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“[T]he state seems to have largely ceded control of the litigation to the private plaintiff’s lawyers and deferred to their legal positions,” the letter reads, adding that plaintiffs’ claims run “clearly contrary” to the 1978 law, and are “devoid of legal merit.”
In his letter to Murrill, Barr said he was deeply concerned by agreements made with Landry in relation to the lawsuits. Landry had been criticized by the state-based Pelican Institute and other sources for his apparent closeness to plaintiffs’ attorney John Carmouche – a donor who he recently named to the Louisiana State University board.
Barr went on to argue that pre-1980 damages do not qualify for grandfathering under a relevant 1978 natural resources law and that “serious constitutional issues of retroactivity due process and takings” exist in Louisiana’s arguments.
Instead, he said, Louisiana should consider whether the federal government is responsible for the “vast majority” of the land-loss phenomenon that attorneys are trying to blame on energy companies.
Barr wrote the letter on behalf of the American Free Enterprise Chamber of Commerce, the American Energy Institute, the United States Energy Association and First Principles.
“We are concerned these suits, if they continue, will impact critical current LNG plants and operations in the coastal zone, curtail new energy investments in Louisiana, constrain funding available for new production in the Gulf of America, and undermine President Trump’s efforts to re-establish American energy dominance,” Barr said.
Neither Carmouche nor Landry responded to requests for comment on the original lawsuit.
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Attorney Jimmy Faircloth, representing state agencies in the suit, told the Times-Picayune that the Landry administration supports the energy industry and its positive impact on jobs.
Faircloth reportedly said the case is more about Texaco’s alleged “sins of the past” and failure to enforce regulations in past decades.
