16th Feb 2026: Unanimous not guilty verdict for six medics, who took action to protect public health during lethal heatwave
On 16th February, at Snaresbrook crown court, a jury, after fewer than four hours of deliberation, returned a unanimous not guilty verdict at the retrial of the 6 medics who cracked windows at JP Morgan bank. The action took place during 2022’s extreme heatwave to raise the alarm over JPM’s continued fossil fuel investments and the harm to the health of their patients and the public. The verdict was reached despite the jury being given no formal legal route to acquit. This outcome represents a powerful affirmation of democratic judgment and a decisive win for future generations.
During the trial, the defendants were clear that their actions were motivated by a duty of care to all, including those working inside the JPMorgan building. They argued that medical responsibility does not end at the clinic door when preventable harm is escalating. The medics described their commitment to medical ethics, and the oaths they all take to protect life as part of their job.
The verdict sends a clear message: when institutions of power fail to protect life, conscience, care, and collective responsibility still matter — and juries understand that.
“Medicine says we are duty bound to intervene when we see a looming threat, to take the most effective action to save a life, even if it involves breaking the rules.”
“You have heard numbers: degrees of warming, excess deaths, costs of damage. Behind those numbers are bodies – our patients’ bodies.
The 2022 heatwave was not just ‘hot weather’. It was a lethal, medical emergency, with thousands of deaths all directly linked to heat.”
“in 2022, when we took action, we acted in hope, on the possibility of turning off the tap on future fossil fuel funding… …since then we have seen climate protestors heavily repressed, and a doubling down of polluters pouring money into new fossil fuel projects“
Read & watch more about the trial here:
The Doctor, Doctors cleared of criminal damage ; Novara Media, Jury acquits fossil fuel protestors who smashed JP Morgan windows; Bluesky
BACKGROUND
On 17 July 2022, amid a lethal UK heatwave, four doctors and two nurses cracked windows at JP Morgan’s European HQ in Canary Wharf, the world’s largest financier of fossil fuels, to expose a driver of what health professionals increasingly recognise as an unfolding and irreversible public health and ecological emergency.
Health workers have a duty not only to care for individual patients, but to protect population health and to sound the alarm when state or corporate actions place lives, health systems and the conditions for life at risk.
At their first trial in June 2024 the jury refused to find the medics guilty
The timeline below traces JP Morgan’s public climate claims alongside its ongoing expansion of fossil fuel financing and rising emissions; the resulting, escalating health and ecological harms of the climate crisis; and the people‑centred actions Doctors for XR (later renamed Health for XR) have taken since 2020 to document these harms, call those in power to account, and defend public and planetary health.
For full document and weblinks download here
