Legal implications of the climate-health crisis: A case study analysis of the role of public health in climate litigation

Findings on public health-linked cases Of the 1641 cases of climate litigation identified in this review, only 65 were categorized as directly “public health-linked” on the basis of plaintiffs explicitly mentioning human health in legal argumentation and/or expressing a value for human health through emphasis on human health-environment interconnections. The status of these cases as of September 2020 is depicted in Fig 6, with 11 cases achieving success for the plaintiff, 11 cases determined for the defendant, and 25 cases still pending decision. The file years for pending cases and verdict years for decided cases are shown in Figs 7 and 8, respectively. In both, a clear temporal trend with rising frequency of both filed and decided cases is shown. Nine notable cases that occurred in the past 5 years were selected for more in-depth analysis based on their strong public health linkages. These cases are listed and summarized in chrono- logical order in Table 1, with indication of the number of times the word “health” (both Fig 4. Public health-linked climate litigation cases by category of defendant. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0268633.g004 Fig 5. Public health-linked climate litigation cases by field of law. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0268633.g005 PLOS ONE Public health as a legal tool in climate litigation PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0268633 June 15, 2022 11 / 31