In yet another theatrical act of lawfare against the fossil fuel industry, Misti Leon has launched a wrongful death lawsuit against seven oil and gas companies, alleging they were responsible for the tragic passing of her mother, Juliana Leon, during the 2021 Pacific Northwest heatwave. The legal argument? That anthropogenic emissions from these companies directly caused the heatwave and therefore, her mother’s death. This suit, announced on May 29, 2025, marks a new chapter in the ongoing campaign to litigate weather.

The idea that any single heatwave—or any isolated weather event—can be laid at the feet of specific industrial actors stretches credulity. But this isn’t about evidence. It’s about constructing a politically useful narrative. The 2021 heatwave, which indeed brought record-breaking temperatures to the region, is now being used as a legal battering ram against energy producers. But the scientific scaffolding behind this claim is conspicuously hollow.

The event in question occurred in June 2021, when temperatures in the Pacific Northwest surged past 108°F. Juliana Leon died in her vehicle on a sweltering day in Ferndale, Washington, with a broken air conditioner and windows rolled down—a tragic circumstance exacerbated by her recent bariatric surgery and increased vulnerability to heat. The lawsuit alleges that oil companies failed to warn the public about the dangers of climate change and actively sowed doubt about the “consensus” on global warming. Yet none of this explains why individual risk factors, personal decisions, and public weather warnings play no role in the plaintiff’s logic. It’s a crude scapegoating operation masquerading as justice.

On the scientific front, the lawsuit relies on a distorted interpretation of “climate attribution science”—a burgeoning field that attempts to assign probabilistic blame for weather events to human activities. In the immediate aftermath of the heatwave, NOAA analysts called it a “1,000-year event,” with some attributing its occurrence to man-made climate change. But more rigorous follow-ups told a different story.