Gallagher and Hinchey Lead New York Lawmakers and Advocates in Push for the Corporate Catastrophe Act
Landmark Legislation Would Make New York the First State to Hold Corporate Executives Personally Liable for Knowingly Harming Residents and the Environment
ALBANY, NY – Assembly Member Emily Gallagher and Senator Michelle Hinchey today gathered state lawmakers, frontline community leaders, and environmental advocates at the State Capitol to call for passage of the New York Corporate Catastrophe Act (A10210/S9159) this session. The bill would create a new criminal offense in New York’s Penal Law, making it a crime for corporate executives to knowingly, intentionally, or recklessly cause — or create serious risk of — disasters that injure people or damage communities.
Supporters say the bill would create a tool for New York to respond to and deter the kind of dangerous corporate recklessness that has caused past catastrophes — from gas explosions to the opioid epidemic to the Greenpoint oil spill and Hudson River PCB contamination. The bill is based off of language in the Model Penal Code, and six states — New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Missouri, Maine, Illinois, and Utah — have adopted versions of a corporate catastrophe offense. New York’s bill is distinct as the first in the country to hold executives themselves criminally liable for the disasters they cause.
Assembly Member Emily Gallagher said, “For too long, corporate executives have written off civil penalties for harm caused as the cost of doing business. ExxonMobil has known about the warming effect and catastrophic impacts of burning fossil fuels for 50 years and, instead of changing course, spent billions fueling a propaganda campaign to deny the science. The people who are making the decision to risk human life, health, and wellbeing for their own profits deserve to be held criminally liable. As our federal government and even state leadership retreat from climate and environmental protections, this bill is a critical step to protect New Yorkers, deter life threatening recklessness, and hold corporate bad actors accountable.”
Senator Michelle Hinchey said, “Corporate executives who knowingly make decisions that devastate communities and our environment should never be allowed to walk away without facing consequences. New Yorkers have paid the price for generations — from oil spills to gas explosions to toxic dumping and water contamination — trying to build back from the wreckage while the corporate actors responsible face none of it. With the federal administration now stripping away protections across almost every sector, many corporations will only grow more emboldened to operate with impunity. The Corporate Catastrophe Act must exist for exactly these moments: to make clear that in New York, corporate power is not a shield and no executive can evade accountability for the destruction they knowingly cause.”
Senator Robert Jackson said, “When corporations choose profit over people, the damage does not disappear into balance sheets—it settles in our lungs, our water, and our communities. The Corporate Catastrophe Act draws a clear line: power must answer to responsibility. No executive should be shielded when their decisions knowingly endanger lives. This is not about punishment for its own sake—it is about restoring trust, enforcing accountability, and affirming a simple truth: in New York, justice must be as strong as the harm it seeks to prevent.”
“Too often, our most vulnerable communities bear the burden of the negligence of private corporations,” said Senator Lea Webb. “When corporations cause catastrophic harm, the consequences fall on our communities, not the executives who actually made those decisions. New York has no law specifically targeting high-level executives who knowingly or recklessly cause injury or environmental damage. The Corporate Catastrophe Act targets the most senior decision-makers and ensures that they can be held liable for their actions.”
Assemblymember Phara Souffrant Forrest said, “Currently, devastating consequences of corporate recklessness do not have any repercussions. The Corporate Catastrophe Act sends a clear message: if a corporation causes a catastrophe, there will be real consequences. Too often, working families bear the brunt of corporate negligence and there is no accountability. I’m honored to join my colleagues as a cosponsor and fight for the safety and well-being of every New Yorker.”
Aaron Regunberg, Director of Public Citizen’s Climate Accountability Project, said, “We are living in an age of increasing elite impunity. The Trump administration has ended practically all prosecutions for corporate wrongdoing at the federal level. And even before Trump poured gasoline on this crisis, corporations were regularly getting away with dangerous recklessness. New Yorkers are tired of this two-tiered system of justice. Crimes shouldn’t go unpunished simply because they were committed by powerful corporations or because they endangered a hundred or a thousand New Yorkers, rather than one or two. The criminal law is supposed to keep our communities safe from dangerous actors who would do us harm. It’s time we actually apply that principle to the truly dangerous corporate actors who are doing the most harm.”
Third Act Campaigns Director, Michael Richardson said, “While fossil fuel companies continue to reap billions of dollars in profit from pumping their fuel and plastics into our environment, they remain morally unaccountable for the damage they sow upon our communities. Any financial restitution from civil charges is often absorbed by Big Oil merely as the cost of doing business. This legislation would give prosecutors the means to rein in the fossil fuel industry’s ongoing conduct that increases the risk of climate catastrophes for New Yorkers. A reckoning for this injustice is long overdue.”
“An enormous amount of hazardous materials move through the Hudson River and New York Harbor by ship and rail, and we rely on established safety standards to prevent dangerous discharges and provide legal avenues for holding polluters accountable in the case of a catastrophe,” said Riverkeeper Associate Director of Government Affairs Jeremy Cherson. “However, those legal pathways often fail to hold companies answerable for knowingly cutting corners and putting the environment and public at risk. The Corporate Catastrophe Act will provide additional incentives for safely transporting hazardous materials by holding the responsible C-suite executives and managers accountable for safety lapses instead of allowing corporations to write off disaster as the cost of doing business.”
“Citizen Action strongly supports the corporate catastrophe bill because it adds a critical additional arrow in the quiver — criminal penalties — for governmental officials who are seeking to address serious environmental harms, including fires, explosions, radioactive releases and floods caused by senior officials in large corporations,” said Bob Cohen, Policy and Research Director of Citizen Action of New York. “For megacorporations like Exxon with billions in revenue each year, civil penalties are simply not enough to deter them from destroying the lives of thousands of New Yorkers whose homes and properties are destroyed, or daily lives disrupted. As the climate crisis becomes even more acute, these kinds of disasters are unfortunately going to become more prevalent. We have to update our laws to deter high corporate officials from engaging in negligent or even deliberately callous behavior that harms the public.”
“For too long, corporate executives have been able to walk away from the disasters they create—disasters that destroy communities, poison waterways, and upend lives—while writing off the consequences as a cost of doing business. Young people bear the long-term costs of corporate wrongdoing; that’s why we’re proud to support S9519 and A10210. New York has the opportunity to ensure long-term accountability and we urge the Legislature to pass these bills.” said Shiv Soin, Co-Executive Director of Treeage.
“We hear from survivors across the country who are carrying the emotional and financial weight of disasters that are becoming more destructive every year, while the corporations that helped drive this crisis continue to avoid accountability,” said Chris Kocher, Co-Founder of Extreme Weather Survivors. “New Yorkers deserve a legal system that recognizes the real harm these disasters cause to families, homes, and livelihoods. S9519 and A10210 are about ensuring that reckless corporate conduct that contributes to widespread devastation does not go unanswered. Survivors are speaking out because they know their stories have the power to drive real change, and lawmakers have an opportunity to act.”
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