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Two counties and a city in California have filed separate Superior Court lawsuits against 37 oil and coal companies seeking damages related to fossil fuel development, which the communities allege has resulted in climate-related problems in their areas. Their lawsuits are "a first-of-its-kind challenge that some liken to the high-stakes litigation of the tobacco industry in the 1990s," writes Kurtis Alexander.

The current case claims that the government has done both too little to solve the problem of climate change and too much to worsen it-even while knowing of the risks it poses to citizens. There is little dispute that at least some parts of the government have been aware of the causes and costs of climate change for a very long time. 

Washington is suing Monsanto over widespread PCBs contamination, the first U.S. state to take such an action. Gov. Jay Inslee and Attorney General Bob Ferguson announced the lawsuit, filed in King County Superior Court, at a press conference in Seattle on Thursday. According to the Associated Press, Washington is seeking damages on several grounds, including product liability for Monsanto's alleged failure to warn about the dangers of PCBs; negligence; and trespass for injuring the state's natural resources.

The Sierra Club on Monday filed a lawsuit against the US Department of Energy demanding that DOE identify the groups and individuals it consulted with on a soon-to-be released nationwide electric grid reliability study. "We want to make sure that when this study is finally released, that the public and policy makers fully understand how [DOE] went about doing it, who they were influenced by, and whose views they did not take into consideration," said Sierra Club attorney Casey Roberts.