A Plaquemines Parish jury ordered Chevron to pay $745 million in damages on Friday to restore an area of Louisiana coastal wetlands, a landmark verdict likely to have wider implications on dozens of other similar lawsuits.
The case was the first to go to trial among 41 parish lawsuits against oil companies seeking to hold them accountable for coastal damage. The verdict may influence how other cases proceed as Louisiana struggles to find badly needed money to address its accelerating land loss crisis in the years ahead.
While coastal advocates welcomed the verdict as fair and a boost for wetlands restoration, oil and other business groups in Louisiana harshly condemned it, arguing it will harm the state’s economy in the long run. The total cost could be more than $1 billion once interest is calculated.
Gov. Jeff Landry’s administration has been largely supportive of the oil and gas industry, but it intervened in the case on Plaquemines’ behalf opposing Chevron. Landry’s spokesperson referred questions to Attorney General Liz Murrill, who called the verdict “fair” and thanked jurors for their work.
The verdict was the culmination of a month-long trial that played out at a courthouse in Pointe à la Hache. It pitted the Plaquemines Parish government, represented by lead attorney John Carmouche of Baton Rouge–based law firm Talbot, Carmouche and Marcello, against oil giant Chevron, which was represented by a team of lawyers led by Mike Phillips.
The lawsuit had been initially filed in 2013.
Attorney John H. Carmouche and his team pose at the Plaquemines Parish Courthouse in Pointe ˆ la Hache, La., Friday, April 4, 2025. (Photo by Sophia Germer, The Times-Picayune)
“I think this was a great win for our community,” said Phil Cossich, an attorney on the team that represented Plaquemines Parish. “It’s been a long time coming. This could be a great step in saving our coast.”
Chevron plans to appeal “to address the numerous legal errors that led to this unjust result,” Phillips, the firm’s lawyer, said in a statement. “Chevron is not the cause of the land loss occurring in Breton Sound.”
Jurors deliberated for about four hours before arriving at their decision. The damage award breaks down as $575 million for land loss, $161 million for pollution and $8.6 million for abandoned equipment, for a total amount of $744.6 million.
Plaquemines Parish had asked the jury to award $2.6 billion.
The full amount that Chevron may eventually have to pay, interest included, is around $1.2 billion, according to Carmouche’s team. Chevron disputes that figure. Interest accrues from the date the case was filed.
‘Could be a lifeline’
Plaquemines alleged that Texaco skirted state law by failing to apply for coastal permits and not removing oil and gas infrastructure from its site when it stopped using an oil field in Breton Sound. It argued that massive coastal land loss and pollution can be directly linked to Texaco’s oil and gas activity.
Chevron, which bought Texaco in 2001, said that the regulations in question went into effect in 1980 and were not intended to apply to oil and gas activity that began before that. The company doesn’t deny that land loss has occurred in the area around the site of the oil field, but maintains the oil and gas activity was not responsible for it.
The case has taken on outsized importance because it strikes at the heart of Louisiana’s land loss crisis. While the levees holding the Mississippi River in place set the problem in motion, oil and gas activity has been a major contributor due to the thousands of miles of canals cut through wetlands and because of fossil fuel extraction exacerbating land subsidence.
Chevron attorneys pose in front of the Old Plaquemines Parish Courthouse in Pointe ˆ la Hache, La., Friday, April 4, 2025. (Photo by Sophia Germer, The Times-Picayune)
As a result of all those factors and more, the state has lost around 2,000 square miles of land over the past century — about the size of Delaware. Sea level rise is projected to greatly worsen the problem in the decades ahead.
The state has a 50-year Coastal Master Plan in place to salvage what it can, but it is facing severe money shortages in the near future. It has used billions in settlements and fines related to the 2010 BP oil spill to pay for large-scale restoration work, but that money expires by 2032.
The Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana, a nonprofit that has been working to restore Louisiana’s coast for decades, said that the verdict could provide much-needed funding.
“Our state has a sophisticated, science-based Coastal Master Plan that will help us preserve our communities and culture, but we simply don’t have the money to implement all the projects,” said the organization’s communications director, James Karst. “This type of funding could be a lifeline, helping us do the work that will benefit everyone who depends on healthy wetlands.”
‘A chilling message’
That view was not shared by Louisiana’s politically powerful oil and business interests. The Louisiana Mid-Continent Oil and Gas Association’s president, Tommy Faucheux, indicated that the verdict would chill economic activity and worsen the situation as a result.
“Louisiana cannot prosper in its current litigious climate, when misguided lawsuits can attack the industry that is our main economic driver,” he said in a statement. “Today’s verdict sends a message to the rest of the world that Louisiana is not an attractive place for industry or new investments.”
The Louisiana Association of Business and Industry echoed that, noting that the state’s oil and gas industry “supports more than 250,000 jobs and contributes billions of dollars annually to our state’s economy,” the association’s president and CEO Will Green said in a statement. The verdict, he added, “threatens those economic benefits but also sends a chilling message to businesses across the country about the risks of operating in Louisiana.”
The Pelican Institute, a free-market think tank in New Orleans, and Grow Louisiana, an organization that advocates for the energy industry in Louisiana, also issued statements saying that the verdict would cost the state jobs.
Carmouche said he planned to charge ahead with the other lawsuits, saying the companies that helped damage the coast must be held responsible. His efforts follow a long and politically divisive history of Louisiana debating if and how it should seek to force oil companies to pay for coastal damage.
“This is just the first case in the fight to restore and renew Louisiana’s coastal and marsh areas,” he said in a statement after the verdict.
“There are 40 such cases, and our energy is focused on securing appropriate verdicts and awards for every parish involved in these actions. If we continue to be successful in our efforts, these parishes, and Louisiana, will have sent a clear message that Louisiana’s future must be built around a new balance between our energy industry and our environmental necessities.”