5. Special Case: Liability and Climate Change

A new type of litigation is increasingly becoming a burden for businesses: climate change-related litigation. Indeed, even without a proven case of ecological harm, a company may be held civilly liable for damages related to climate change. Ecological harm and a causal link cannot be identified due to the difficulty in determining the actual contribution of the activity in question to air pollution. Two foreign court decisions are particularly noteworthy.

The first is the ruling issued by the Court of Appeal (CA) in The Hague on November 12, 2024, Milieudefensie et al. v. Shell