Authored by Owen Evans via The Epoch Times,
A federal judge dismissed an antitrust lawsuit in which Michigan accused four major oil companies of acting as a cartel to block renewable energy.
U.S. District Judge Jane Beckering in Grand Rapids on Tuesday rejected a lawsuit filed in January by Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, a Democrat, against BP, Chevron, Exxon, Shell, and the American Petroleum Institute.
Nessel claimed they caused Michigan residents to suffer "artificially high home and transportation energy costs."
She said that defendants acted "as a cartel in an unlawful conspiracy in restraint of trade to forestall meaningful competition from renewable energy in order to maintain their dominance in the transportation energy market and primary energy markets in Michigan and nationally in order to reap windfall, and illegal, profits."
The complaint said that the defendants' conspiracy "restrained competition in the primary energy market by suppressing renewable alternatives like solar and wind power in favor of fossil fuels."
The judge said antitrust laws protect against none of the injuries for which Michigan sought a remedy, except for energy overcharges.
"The distance is too great between the alleged conspiracy and Michigan's and its residents' overcharges to find that the conspiracy proximately caused the overcharges," Beckering said.
Other judges have rejected similar climate l
