Big Oil Liability in Canada: Lessons from the US and The Netherlands
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The number of nuisance and negligence tort claims in the US against “Big Oil” companies have grown significantly in the last five years. The Netherlands case of Milieudefensie et al v Royal Dutch Shell represents the first major success of such a claim internationally. While the US cases and Milieudefensie demonstrate starkly different approaches as to how to seek accountability from Big Oil for climate change harms, the increasing judicial engagement on these issues may mean the time is right for similar lawsuits in Canada. Three Canadian common law causes of action are examined: nuisance, negligence, and unjust enrichment. Defences and arguments which stem from society’s (and any potential plaintiff’s) acquiescence and authorization to allow the defendants’ conduct may present difficult barriers to success. This paper focuses on these types of defences, and argues that the responsibility of Big Oil for climate change harms should not be completely vitiated even if governments and plaintiffs have acquiesced, authorized, and arguably contributed to our climate crisis.\nLe nombre de plaintes pour nuisance et négligence déposées aux États-Unis contre les « grandes compagnies pétrolières » a considérablement augmenté au cours des cinq dernières années. L’affaire néerlandaise Milieudefensie et al contre Royal Dutch Shell représente le premier succès majeur d’une telle plainte au niveau international. Si les affaires américaines et Milieudefensie témoignent d’approches très différentes quant à la manière de demander des comptes aux grandes compagnies pétrolières pour les dommages causés par les changements climatiques, l’engagement judiciaire croissant sur ces questions pourrait signifier que le moment est venu d’intenter des actions similaires au Canada. Trois causes d’action en common law canadienne sont examinées : la nuisance, la négligence et l’enrichissement sans cause. Les défenses et les arguments qui découlent de l’acquiescement et de l’autorisation de la société (et de tout plaignant potentiel) à permettre la conduite des défendeurs peuvent présenter des obstacles difficiles à surmonter. Cet article se concentre sur ces types de défenses et soutient que la responsabilité des grandes compagnies pétrolières dans les dommages causés par les changements climatiques ne devrait pas être complètement écartée, même si les gouvernements et les plaignants ont acquiescé, autorisé et sans doute contribué à notre crise climatique.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.004 | 0.014 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.007 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.009 | 0.004 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.009 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.004 | 0.004 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.006 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".