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Environmental
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May 24, 2013
Developer Loses Bid To Block Govt.'s Clean Water Act Claims
A New York federal judge on Friday denied a developer's request for an injunction barring the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Justice from pursuing Clean Water Act claims over his plans to develop his land, shifting the next phase of the dispute to ongoing civil proceedings.
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May 24, 2013
JPML Head Judge Explains Why Panel Is More Picky
The U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation has rejected a higher percentage of centralization requests in recent years, a trend the head of the panel told Law360 was due in part to a rise in patent cases and other types of litigation he said were more likely to center on individual issues.
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May 24, 2013
State Dept. Posting 'Unprecedented' 1.2M Keystone Comments
The U.S. State Department said Thursday that it will post the "unprecedented" 1.2 million public comments submitted in response to an environmental report regarding TransCanada Corp.'s controversial Keystone XL pipeline — the department's first public release of all the comments for a presidential permit application.
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May 24, 2013
BLM OKs Calif. Wind Farm Amid Enviro Bird Strike Worries
The U.S. Bureau of Land Management on Friday approved the construction of a 150-megawatt wind farm in southern California, amid concerns from environmentalists over the agency allowing the project to potentially injure or kill an endangered California condor over its 30-year-lifespan without incurring an Endangered Species Act violation.
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May 24, 2013
Anti-Whaling Protesters Are Pirates, 9th Circ. Affirms
The Ninth Circuit on Friday affirmed its February ruling that anti-whaling activist Paul Watson and his group are pirates under international law and that Japanese researchers who hunt whales in the Antarctic Ocean deserve an injunction blocking the activists’ piracy.
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May 24, 2013
W.Va. Asks High Court To Limit Greenhouse Gas Regulation
West Virginia has joined more than a dozen states calling for the U.S. Supreme Court to block the federal government from regulating power plants' greenhouse gas emissions, asking it to overturn a D.C. Circuit ruling endorsing the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's finding that the gases endanger public health.
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May 24, 2013
Energy Storage Bill Would Boost Renewables, Sens. Say
Four U.S senators on Thursday reintroduced a bill that would offer tax incentives for the use of technologies that can store energy, which they claim would spur further renewable energy development and lower electricity costs by reducing the need for electricity at peak hours.
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May 24, 2013
Conrail Denies Liability For NJ Derailment, Chemical Spill
In a brief filed Tuesday in Pennsylvania state court, Consolidated Rail Corp. said it could not be held liable as a carrier of hazardous material for alleged injuries suffered by a group of nearly two dozen New Jersey residents after a November train derailment and chemical spill.
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May 24, 2013
Cuomo Asks NY Regulator To Help Ease Electric Car Rollout
Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo on Friday prodded a state regulator to help remove red tape that could slow down a plan to install thousands of charging stations across New York in order to put 40,000 electric and plug-in hybrid cars on the road by 2018.
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May 24, 2013
Oil Group Challenges Seals' 'Threatened Species' Status
The Alaska Oil & Gas Association sued the National Marine Fisheries Service in Alaska federal court Wednesday, arguing that a recently implemented rule listing two populations of bearded seals as threatened was not backed by evidence and was an overreach.
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May 23, 2013
$2B Hospital Project Again Clears San Fran Panel
After nearly a year of legal and political stumbling over the environmental review of California Pacific Medical Center’s $2 billion hospital expansion plan, the project on Thursday won back expired approvals from the San Francisco planning commission.
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May 23, 2013
New Bill Saps States Of Chemical Safety Oversight Powers
Under the chemical safety reform bill unveiled Wednesday, states and cities would give up to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency nearly all of their ability to ban dangerous chemicals or require safety testing, and the little power they did preserve would be prone to challenges from chemical makers.
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May 23, 2013
Donziger Loses Bid To Delay $19B Chevron Case
A federal judge on Thursday refused to delay Chevron Corp.’s case against Steven Donziger, the lawyer accused of using fraud to win a $19 billion pollution judgment against the oil company, despite Donziger’s pleas for more time.
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May 23, 2013
Cooper Industries To Pay $340K In EPA Cleanup Suit
Cooper Industries LLC has agreed to cough up $340,000 in a deal with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to cover future cleanup costs at a Superfund site in West Virginia that was used to rebuild motors and transformers used in coal mining, according to Thursday court filings.
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May 23, 2013
States Want NRC To Expand Waste Storage Study's Scope
The states of Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York and Vermont on Wednesday urged the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to expand its court-ordered review of radioactive waste storage at nuclear power plants, including exploring the option of halting nuclear plant operations until the NRC devises an acceptable and permanent storage solution.
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May 23, 2013
Texas Appeals Court Upholds Keystone XL Land Grab
A Texas appeals court on Thursday removed a hurdle to TransCanada Corp’s planned Keystone XL Pipeline, rejecting a landowner’s argument that the company should have been forced to prove it qualified as a common carrier before it was given access to private property.
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May 23, 2013
No Future For Climate Change Torts, Attys Say
With the U.S. Supreme Court and the Fifth Circuit recently pulling the plug on suits blaming energy companies for spewing greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming and extreme weather, attorneys say the pursuit of climate change tort litigation is approaching a dead end, leaving legislation and regulation as the only viable outlets to tackle the issue.
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May 23, 2013
Chevron Investors Seek SEC Probe Over $19B Ecuador Battle
A coalition of Chevron Corp. shareholders asked the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday to investigate the oil giant over allegations it has misled investors about the potential impact of a bitterly contested $19 billion Amazonian pollution judgment.
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May 23, 2013
Pa. Rep. Pushes Bill To Track Fracking Health Effects
Following a hearing in which experts accused Pennsylvania regulators of inadequately protecting public health and the environment from the effects of Marcellus Shale drilling, organizer Rep. Greg Vitali, D-Delaware, announced Wednesday that he would push legislation expanding the responsibilities of the state's health agency.
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May 22, 2013
Cooley Boosts Litigation Team With DLA Piper Enviro Atty
Cooley LLP said Wednesday it added a DLA Piper attorney with expertise in environmental, product liability and real estate suits to ramp up its national litigation practice in San Diego.
Expert Analysis
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1 Step Forward, 1 Step Back In Enviro Self-Audit Policy
As the New York Department of Environmental Conservation moves forward with a self-audit policy, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is seeking ways to pare back its own audit policy. Because audit programs almost undoubtedly achieve compliance, eliminating self-auditing, self-reporting and self-correction is hardly smart or efficient, say Steven Russo and Adam Silverman of Greenberg Traurig LLP.
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How To Avoid The Dirty Side Of Clean Energy
Recent news reports on the RusHydro embezzlement, a U.S. Virgin Islands senator's arrest and the Italian mafia infiltration suggest that the not-so-clean side of the clean energy sector may come under greater scrutiny around the world. These reports should serve as a sobering reminder for companies of the risks and consequences of international corruption, say attorneys with Covington & Burling LLP.
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The Starstruck Medical Causation Trend
In the technical sense, medical causation answers whether an accused substance brought about some alleged disease. But rarely are the central causal allegations in major toxic torts purely courtroom affairs — publicity and politics now drive the litigation, with plaintiff verdicts begetting more publicity, says James Sabovich of Gibson Dunn & Crutcher LLP.
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An Opportunity To Limit Prop 65 Abuse
The long-awaited proposed reforms to California's Proposition 65 are welcome and needed as they would greatly reduce the number of frivolous Prop. 65 lawsuits and alleviate the defense costs for manufacturers, says Mark Johnson of Alston & Bird LLP.
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Rise Of The Machines — Predictive Coding Goes Mainstream
The pros of using predictive coding far outweigh the cons. Given the heavy pressure on law firms and in-house counsel to reduce discovery costs, as well as the Justice Department's recent stance on the subject, it appears predictive coding will continue to emerge from the obscure world of legal technology to the mainstream of legal practice, say Michael Moscato and Myles Bartley of Curtis Mallet-Prevost Colt & Mosle LLP.
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The Oil And Gas Operator's Texas Advantage
The interpretation by the Supreme Court of Texas in Reeder v. Wood County Energy LLC grants vast protection to oil and gas operators, but by doing so, it is perceived by some as muddling the differences between tort and contract law, says Michael Bolton and Kate Kalanick of Faegre Baker Daniels LLP.
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Know Your Risks Before Going Green In Construction
Although there are benefits to “going green” in the construction, development and operation of buildings, there are also risks unique to green building that will test the boundaries of coverage under typical liability insurance policies, say attorneys with Sedgwick LLP.
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4th Circ. Weighs In On Bona Fide Purchaser Defense
The Fourth Circuit recently issued a ruling in PCS Nitrogen Inc. v. Ashley II of Charleston that may limit the availability of the bona fide prospective purchaser defense. By narrowly construing one of the elements of the BFPP defense, the court has underscored the importance of strict compliance with all requirements of the defense, say attorneys with K&L Gates LLP.
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Get Ready For Stricter RMP Enforcement
The recent $4 million settlement by Tyson Foods Inc. represents one of the largest penalties for a stand-alone risk management program enforcement case since the provision was added to the Clean Air Act in 1990. This case also exemplifies the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s increasing focus on RMP compliance and its intention to seek ever-larger penalties for RMP violations, say attorneys with Kilpatrick Townsend Stockton LLP.
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Another Challenge To Calif. Cap-And-Trade Law
The California Air Resources Board has again been sued over its implementation of the Global Warming Solutions Act in Morning Star Packing Co., et al. v. CARB, which resembles an earlier action brought by the California Chamber of Commerce. Petitioners of both cases face the difficult challenge of convincing the court to derail a massive regulatory scheme that is now well underway, say attorneys with Marten Law PLLC.