Climate change is very real — and so is the risk of litigation
The Lawyer’s Daily / Published December 21, 2017
According to a recent analysis, close to 900 climate-change cases have been filed in “24 countries and in the European Union, with 654 cases filed in the U.S. and over 230 cases filed in all other countries combined,” as of March 2017.
So far, many of these cases have been filed against government entities, either for their failures to regulate consistent with their rhetoric in international negotiations, or for failing to protect their citizens’ health and future prospects according to long-standing, common law public trust doctrines.
But one type of litigation should be of increasing concern to Canadian officers and directors: litigation targeting actions and inactions of company officials in evaluating their company’s strategies in light of a changing regulatory and physical landscape, or challenging failures in disclosing risks or opportunities for their company from those changes.