Climate Litigation Reaches More Industries and Corporate Decisions

Climate-related legal exposure is spreading across industries and business decisions. The 2026 Global Trends in Climate Change Litigation report, from the Grantham Research Institute at the London School of Economics, records more than 3,600 cases filed since 1986. More than three quarters came after the 2015 Paris Agreement. Cases have been documented in 62 countries, up from 17 a decade ago, and 249 new cases were filed in 2025.

For businesses, the key shift is the widening set of companies and decisions involved. More than 50 strategic climate-aligned cases were filed against companies in 2025, bringing the total since 2015 to 434. Defendants now come from energy, finance, transport, real estate and consumer goods, with claims reaching further into emissions-intensive supply chains.

That makes climate litigation relevant well beyond companies that extract or sell fossil fuels. Financing, procurement, infrastructure, product claims and resilience planning can all connect a business to climate-related disputes. Sustainability leaders need a view of how those decisions are made across the organization, where the company operates and what evidence supports the claims it makes.

Claims follow business activity

The report describes several types of cases involving companies. Some challenge a company's contribution to climate change; others focus on transition plans, governance, physical climate risks, directors' management of transition risk or the accuracy of environmental claims. The range reflects how climate considerations now touch both long-term strategy and day-to-day business activity.

Climate-washing cases account for at least 226 filings worldwide since 2015. Other claims concern failure to adapt, transition risk, and efforts to change corporate policies or governance. Newer areas include carbon-removal infrastructure, data centres and plastics. As investment and business models shift, legal arguments are beginning to address the projects and products associated with that shift.

This wider reach calls for a broader assessment of exposure. A company may need to examine which assets face physical climate risks, how its transition plans relate to investment and operations, and whether supplier or customer relationships connect it to emissions-intensive activity. Its public claims and the methods used to support them also matter. The relevant information may sit across sustainability, finance, operations, risk, procurement and communications, so no single team is likely to have the full picture.

Environmental claims need evidence behind them

The report finds that more than 65% of climate-washing cases that reached a decision were resolved in favor of claimants. Filings in this category have also fallen, from 58 in 2023 to 31 in 2025. The authors point to several possible explanations, including greater corporate awareness of the risks of unsupported environmental claims.

Fewer filings do not mean companies can safely retreat from climate communication. The report warns that greenhushing does not remove exposure, and identifies well-evidenced transition plans and substantiated disclosure as ways businesses can manage risk. The practical test is whether claims can be traced to supporting methods, data and action.

A target, for example, needs a credible pathway behind it. A product claim should reflect the methodology used to assess the product. A transition plan should connect stated ambitions with capital spending and operational choices. Communications teams cannot supply that foundation at the end of the process; it depends on the quality of the analysis and decisions made earlier.

Risks can travel through financial and supply-chain ties

Climate-related claims also involve relationships among companies, financial institutions and other market participants. The report counts at least 42 strategic climate-aligned corporate cases naming financial institutions or state-owned enterprises as defendants; more than 40% of those cases were filed since 2023. Insurers and shareholders are appearing as claimants seeking to recover losses linked to extreme weather. The report also describes scrutiny of how climate and environmental risks are assessed.

For sustainability teams, that brings topics such as supplier due diligence, capital allocation, adaptation plans and environmental impact assessments into the same conversation as legal and financial risk. A company operating across countries also needs to account for differences in local rules and court practices. The report describes a fragmented environment for ESG, alongside legal strategies that cross borders as claimants and courts draw lessons from cases elsewhere.

There is no single template for managing that variation. Teams can start by mapping where climate risks enter major decisions, identifying the jurisdictions and business relationships that matter, and checking whether the evidence behind public claims matches actual plans and operations. Legal, finance, operations, risk, communications and sustainability functions each hold part of that picture; coordination helps connect it.

Use litigation as an early signal

Waiting until a claim arrives can leave a company responding to decisions made years earlier. Sustainability leaders can use the patterns in the report to ask whether physical risks are reflected in asset planning, whether transition risks inform investment decisions, whether climate claims are supported, and whether supply-chain exposure is understood.

The report describes climate litigation as a lasting feature of global climate governance. Cases now involve companies, banks and financial institutions as well as public bodies, and legal arguments move between jurisdictions. For businesses, the practical value of tracking these cases lies in seeing where expectations around climate performance are becoming more specific. Acting on those signals can improve decisions before the evidence and rationale for them are tested in court.