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#4 Louisiana Coastal Litigation

The lawsuit abuse long plaguing the Bayou State was thrust into the national spotlight in 2025. The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to review whether the state’s never-ending coastal litigation belongs in federal or state court. There are over 40 cases pending in state courts that are dripping with political bias and contempt for the defendants. This year the first case went to trial and resulted in an astounding $740 plus million verdict.

The problem starts at the top: the governor has supported the costly coastal litigation that continues to burden the state’s economy and workforce and has openly embraced the plaintiffs’ lawyers leading the charge. As AG, he stripped the targeted defendant companies of their ability to raise legitimate defenses and while campaigning for governor he promised the trial lawyers they would have “nothing to fear” with him as governor. The burdensome litigation has caught the eye of the White House and a former U.S. Attorney General weighed in and urged Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill to make a course correction.

Coastal Erosion Litigation

The endless coastal erosion litigation, which began in 2013, alleges environmental harm and wrongly traces liability for this problem, for which no single entity or group can be responsible, to a small set of energy producers. But cash-strapped local governments see this as an opportunity to partner with trial attorneys and special interests to initiate legal actions and press courts to hold corporate actors financially liable for damages.

This year, in the first coastal litigation case to go to trial, a Plaquemines Parish trial court eliminated causation and expressed sympathy for local interests. This despite the fact that SLCRMA requires a direct tie between restoration costs “to the harm actually caused by the defendant’s unlawful use.” A government witness has testified that many causes contributed to land loss, including “hurricanes, sediment deprivation, sea-level rise, the Army Corps of Engineers’ changes to the Mississippi River’s flow and natural subsidence.”

In the end, plaintiffs were awarded hundreds of millions of dollars in damages despite the absence of any link between the damage and the defendants’ conduct. The court’s biased decision demonstrates why these cases should be in federal court.

First Trial Results in $744M Verdict

Concerns about the state’s coastal litigation reached a fever pitch this year with the first of the 40-plus cases going to trial. In April, a Plaquemines Parish jury awarded an eye-popping $744 million to the Parish, finding Chevron (formerly Texaco) companies liable for environmental damages and for the degradation of the state’s coastal wetlands. Jury deliberations lasted only four hours and the award included $575 million in compensatory damages for coastal land loss, $161 million in compensatory damages for contamination of the land, and $8.6 million in compensatory damages for abandoned equipment.

Following this verdict, Chevron appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, arguing that Louisiana state court is not the proper venue for this case to be heard. The Plaquemines Parish case lays out all the reasons that Louisiana state courts are ill-equipped to handle litigation of this magnitude. The courts are riddled with political bias and favoritism, which will be discussed later in the section. Coastal litigation has enormous implications for the state’s energy industry with the potential to saddle energy companies and job creators with billions in damages, as seen in the first case to go to trial, and it is essential that courts take an impartial approach to the litigation. The U.S. Supreme Court granted certiorari in June 2025 and is scheduled to hear oral arguments on January 12, 2026. ATRA has filed an amicus brief in the case.

Governor Landry’s Ties to the Plaintiffs’ Bar

To date, trial lawyer John Carmouche — a longtime supporter and donor to Governor Jeff Landry — has filed 43 lawsuits related to coastal litigation on behalf of multiple Louisiana parishes. While campaigning for the governorship, Landry promised trial lawyers that they “would have nothing to fear from him as governor.”

Carmouche and his law partners donated $300,000 to a pro-Landry super PAC to support his candidacy for governor in 2023.

Governor Landry has also benefited from an additional $75,000 in contributions funneled through Carmouche’s law firm and its network of allied LLCs and PACs. The firm has long been a force in Louisiana politics, including playing a central role in attacking opponents of former Governor John Bel Edwards, another ally of the plaintiffs’ bar.

Governor Landry later rewarded Carmouche with an appointment to the prestigious Louisiana State University Board of Supervisors — a post that comes with exclusive privileges such as access to the LSU board suite at football games and unique opportunities for business and political networking. As chair of the board’s athletics committee, Carmouche leads the board’s involvement in the selection of the next LSU football coach. Beyond politics, Carmouche and Landry also share personal ties, including duck hunting trips with mutual friends.

Carmouche’s political influence extends beyond the governor’s office. Recognizing the susceptibility of Louisiana courts to political pressure, his firm and PAC contributed $10,500 to help re-elect state district court judge Michael Clement. Judge Clement later presided over the Plaquemines Parish case that produced the astronomical verdict — now on appeal before the U.S. Supreme Court. The Carmouche Firm, which is leading the coastal litigation, is using the recent nuclear verdict® as a benchmark, suggesting that “private counsel may seek to recover significant fees in each of these [pending coastal] cases.”

Much of Carmouche’s support of Landry came during his time as attorney general. In 2016, then-AG Landry agreed to a 2016 common interest and joint prosecution agreement with several parishes, which included a provision that “No party to this Agreement shall at any time expressly or impliedly endorse any substantive defenses or exceptions raised by any defendant in any claims filed by any party to this Agreement under SLCRMA.”

Thus, then-AG Landry as the chief legal officer of the state, agreed that regardless of whether defenses raised are valid, he will not support them, a position that seemingly violates his ethical duty as a lawyer and his duty to uphold the law of the state. Because of this agreement, any new Attorney General or Parish council member may not take the position that any claim is preempted, barred by immunity, or unconstitutional. This prejudgment is exacerbated by the fact that the Parish’s private counsel has a direct financial interest in the outcome of the litigation.

Louisiana Undercuts National Policy

The coastal litigation overlooks historical evidence that many drilling operations followed federal directives, particularly during WWII, when some of these companies produced crude oil to be refined into aviation gasoline to support the U.S.’s military capabilities. In addition, by undercutting the country’s pro-energy policies, these lawsuits threaten an industry that has provided jobs for generations of families, powered Louisiana’s economy and assisted the nation during times of conflict.

In April 2025, President Donald Trump issued an Executive Order “Protecting American Energy from State Overreach,” castigating states for threatening America’s energy dominance by “subject[ing] energy producers to arbitrary or excessive fines through retroactive penalties” cast as damages stemming from costs attributed to climate change.

That month, former Attorney General Bill Barr also sent a letter to Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill expressing concern about the wave of lawsuits filed by the parishes targeting American oil and gas companies. Barr’s letter specifically highlights his concern that “the State seems to have largely ceded control of the litigation to the private plaintiffs’ lawyers and deferred to their legal positions. While local judges have allowed these cases to continue, plaintiffs’ claims are clearly contrary to SLCRMA’s explicit terms and devoid of legal merit.”

Barr went on to say that “[i]gnoring these clearcut limitations, these lawsuits seek to impose ruinous, retroactive liability for oil and gas producers based on decades of activities that were expressly permitted by all relevant federal, state and local authorities and that generated the energy, employment and revenue that once made Louisiana a leading contributor to American prosperity.” Finally, the former U.S. attorney general accuses the state of attempting to double dip. He raises concern that state officials already have filed suits against the federal government over this activity “obtaining many billions of dollars in federal funds by attributing coastal erosion to federal activity and natural causes.” They now seek to hold the oil and gas companies liable for the same coastal erosion, which “seems flatly incompatible with the position previously taken by the State in attributing that erosion to federal action while obtaining federal funds to address coastal damage.” Barr urged Attorney General Murrill to put the best interests of the state above those of the plaintiffs’ bar.