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Energy
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June 17, 2024
CFTC Fines Trafigura $55M In Novel Whistleblower Action
The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission announced a first-of-its-kind settlement Monday with Trafigura Trading LLC, which agreed to pay a $55 million penalty over allegations that it manipulated oil derivatives prices while discouraging employees from reporting potentially illegal activity.
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June 17, 2024
Ares, Searchlight-Led Group Plugs £500M Into RSK Group
British sustainability company RSK Group Ltd., advised by Travers Smith LLP, on Monday announced that it is set to receive a £500 million ($634.5 million) preferred equity investment from a group led by private equity firms Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP-led Searchlight Capital Partners LP and Dechert LLP-led Ares Management Corp., which will be used to fund growth initiatives.
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June 17, 2024
Gibson Dunn Adds Foley Hoag Energy Pro In DC
Gibson Dunn & Crutcher LLP announced Monday that it has expanded its energy practice with the addition of a Foley Hoag LLP partner who boasts nearly 15 years of experience in federal energy regulatory matters, including practicing before the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
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June 17, 2024
Catching Up With Delaware's Chancery Court
Proposed amendments to Delaware's General Corporation Law that were prompted by several recent Chancery Court rulings sailed through the state Senate last week despite loud opposition from corporate law professors and other Chancery Court watchers, and Tesla shareholders filed two new suits against CEO Elon Musk.
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June 17, 2024
Ga. County Says Battery Co.'s Dumping Caused Blaze
A Georgia electric vehicle battery manufacturer that has come under regulatory scrutiny for a series of workplace safety violations has been hit with a lawsuit from its own county, which accused the company of dumping hundreds of batteries that led to a massive fire at a local recycling plant.
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June 17, 2024
BNSF Owes Wash. Tribe $400M For Oil Shipping Trespass
BNSF Railway Co. must pay a Washington tribe nearly $400 million for years of illegally running oil cars across tribal territory, a federal judge in Seattle ruled Monday.
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June 14, 2024
2nd Circ. Releases Citi From Order To Freeze Assets In Gabon
The Second Circuit vacated a protective injunction requiring Citibank to freeze more than $151 million at its Gabon branch amid a shareholder battle for control of a Cameroonian oil pipeline company, saying the New York district court exceeded its jurisdiction by ordering the freeze.
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June 14, 2024
Uri Pricing Upheld After Lower Court 'Strayed From Its Lane'
The Texas Supreme Court on Friday said that the Public Utility Commission of Texas acted within its authority when it set a single price for electricity at the market cap during 2021 winter storm Uri, overturning a blockbuster decision by a lower court that upheld its two pricing orders.
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June 14, 2024
Elon Musk's Court Cases Remain A Live Issue In Delaware
Delaware's courts will continue to assert control over a multibillion-dollar Tesla Inc. legal fee dispute despite the company's rushed effort to reincorporate in Texas and potentially put CEO Elon Musk's massive, multiyear compensation plan beyond the state's reach, those familiar with the case said Friday.
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June 14, 2024
Split DC Circ. Rejects NY's Electricity Rate Challenge
A split D.C. Circuit panel rejected Friday a New York utility regulator's attempt to unravel the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's approval of the state grid operator's wholesale electricity rates, leaving in place an estimated 17-year lifespan for new fossil-fueled power plants.
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June 14, 2024
Colo. Says Pollution Law Leaves Details Up In The Air
Colorado's Air Quality Control Commission said state lawmakers gave it a long leash to implement a 2021 law requiring more stringent air pollution monitoring in disproportionately impacted communities, urging a state judge to reject environmental groups' challenge to a permitting rule.
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June 14, 2024
BP Unit Slapped With $300M Franchise Termination Suit
A trio of entities controlled by two self-proclaimed franchise veterans filed suit in Ohio federal court against a travel center operator acquired by BP in 2023, alleging the company terminated a franchise agreement without warning and caused at least $300 million in damages.
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June 14, 2024
Mining Co. Entity Can't Deduct Loan Interest, UK Court Says
A U.S. mining company's entity in the U.K. that was created to save taxes through the acquisition of a Texas-based firm cannot overturn the Upper Tribunal's decision that its U.K tax deductions weren't deserved, according to a Court of Appeal judgment.
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June 14, 2024
9th Circ. Balks At Gas Buyers' Price-Fix Fight Over Trump Pact
A Ninth Circuit panel appeared skeptical Friday of efforts to revive a proposed antitrust class action alleging that Chevron, Exxon Mobil and others fixed gasoline prices following the Trump administration's 2020 oil production deal with Russia and Saudi Arabia, with each judge doubting that federal courts have jurisdiction over the dispute.
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June 14, 2024
DC Circ. Backs FERC Climate Reviews In Pipeline Project Row
The D.C. Circuit on Friday appeared to endorse the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's current method of evaluating the climate change impacts of gas infrastructure projects in approval in rejecting an environmental group's challenge of the agency's pipeline upgrade project serving the New York City area.
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June 14, 2024
Enviros Fight FERC OK Of Pipeline Feeding Mexico LNG Plant
The Sierra Club and Public Citizen called on the D.C. Circuit to review the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's approval of a methane gas pipeline to run between West Texas and Mexico, asserting the agency failed to conduct a thorough analysis of the pipeline's 157 U.S.-based miles.
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June 14, 2024
UK Litigation Roundup: Here's What You Missed In London
This past week in London has seen toy company Jellycat hit supermarket Aldi with an intellectual property claim, AIG start proceedings against firefighting foam company Angus International Safety Group, and the Solicitors Regulation Authority file a legal claim against the Post Office amid the ongoing Horizon IT scandal. Here, Law360 looks at these and other new claims in the U.K.
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June 14, 2024
Malaysian Oil Biz Hibiscus Buys TotalEnergies Unit For $259M
Kuala Lumpur-based oil and gas producer Hibiscus Petroleum Berhad said it has agreed to buy a Brunei subsidiary of France's TotalEnergie for $259 million, advised by Malaysian law firm Murad Yee Partnership.
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June 13, 2024
Co. Says 'Lawyerly Technicalities' Won't Undo $45B DOE Deal
A joint venture awarded a $45 billion nuclear waste management contract by the U.S. Department of Energy accused a rival joint venture of relying on "lawyerly technicalities" to upend an award it said was ultimately determined by who could perform the work best.
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June 13, 2024
Judge Will Tap Arbitrator To Explain $87M Shipping Award
A New York federal judge will let an arbitrator who found that Levona Holdings Ltd. owed Eletson Holdings Inc. almost $87 million in damages clarify the order, saying it was sufficiently ambiguous to require elaboration and rejecting Levona's request that the arbitrator not be given that chance.
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June 13, 2024
Tesla Investors Sue Over Musk's Extracurricular xAI Diversion
A union pension fund and two individual investors hit Elon Musk and Tesla's board of directors with a derivative suit Thursday in Delaware Chancery Court over the CEO's breakaway effort to develop a new artificial intelligence venture, xAI, by diverting talent and resources from Tesla's own AI initiative.
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June 13, 2024
FERC Faces Chorus Of Calls To Rethink Grid Policy Overhaul
Dozens of requests that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission reconsider parts or all of its sweeping revision of its regional transmission planning policies have been filed, some of which could telegraph future court challenges if the agency ultimately sticks to its guns. Here's a roundup of the notable issues raised in the rehearing requests for FERC Order No. 1920.
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June 13, 2024
9th Circ. Doubts SPAC Investors Can Sue Lucid Over Merger
A Ninth Circuit panel appeared skeptical Thursday of investors' bid to revive a proposed class action alleging that Lucid duped them into buying stock in a special-purpose acquisition company ahead of the electric-vehicle maker's $11.75 billion merger, with two of three judges doubting that the SPAC investors have standing to sue.
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June 13, 2024
DOE Can't Limit Water Usage In Dishwashers, Shoppers Say
Two men sued the U.S. Department of Energy in Texas federal court over the agency's new rules that govern how efficiently household appliances need to manage water usage, saying in a Thursday complaint that the agency surpassed its statutory authority and flouted a previous Fifth Circuit decision.
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June 13, 2024
Norfolk Southern Slams Bid To Seal Reports In Derailment Suit
Norfolk Southern ripped into a chemical company's bid to seal two expert reports from a former first responder that the railroad sought to file in the multidistrict litigation over last year's derailment and chemical spill in Ohio, saying the chemical firm's arguments are weak and misstate the issues.
Expert Analysis
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The Latest Antitrust Areas For In-House Counsel To Watch
The U.S. Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission's increasingly aggressive approach to antitrust enforcement means in-house counsel should closely monitor five key compliance issues, say attorneys at Squire Patton.
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Del.'s Tesla Pay Takedown Tells Boards What Not To Do
The Delaware Chancery Court’s ruthless dissection of the Tesla board’s extreme departures from standard corporate governance in its January opinion striking down CEO Elon Musk’s $55 billion pay package offers a blow-by-blow guide to mistakes Delaware public companies can avoid when negotiating executive compensation, say attorneys at Cleary.
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The Corporate Disclosure Tug-Of-War's Free Speech Issues
The continuing conflict over corporate disclosure requirements — highlighted by a lawsuit against Missouri's anti-ESG rules — has important implications not just for investors and regulated entities but also for broader questions about the scope of the First Amendment, say Colin Pohlman, and Jane Luxton and Paul Kisslinger at Lewis Brisbois.
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3 Administrative Law Lessons From 5th Circ. Appliance Ruling
Showing that mundane details can be outcome-determinative, the Fifth Circuit's recent decision in Louisiana v. U.S. Department of Energy — that the government's repeal of rules affecting dishwashers and laundry machines is invalid — highlights the relationship between regulatory actions and statutory language, say Michael Showalter and Vyasa Babu at ArentFox Schiff.
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Aviation Back On Course, But Keep Seat Belts Fastened
While the airline industry finally returned to profitability last year for the first time since the onset of COVID-19, and is poised for historic levels of traffic in 2024, supply chain problems and economic and geopolitical uncertainty persist — so more turbulence may lie ahead, say Kevin Lewis and Bart Biggers at Sidley.
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Employer Trial Tips For Fighting Worker PPE Pay Claims
Courts have struggled for decades to reach consensus on whether employees must be paid for time spent donning and doffing personal protective equipment, but this convoluted legal history points to practical trial strategies to help employers defeat these Fair Labor Standards Act claims, say Michael Mueller and Evangeline Paschal at Hunton.
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Reimagining Law Firm Culture To Break The Cycle Of Burnout
While attorney burnout remains a perennial issue in the legal profession, shifting post-pandemic expectations mean that law firms must adapt their office cultures to retain talent, say Kevin Henderson and Eric Pacifici at SMB Law Group.
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Series
ESG Around The World: Brazil
Environmental, social and governance issues have increasingly translated into new legislation in Brazil since 2020, and in the wake of these recently enacted regulations, we are likely to see a growing number of legal disputes in the largest South American country related to ESG issues such as greenwashing if companies are not prepared to adequately adapt and comply, say attorneys at Mattos Filho.
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Vagueness In Calif. Climate Law Makes Compliance Tricky
California's recently enacted Voluntary Carbon Market Disclosures Act requires companies making claims of carbon neutrality, or significant greenhouse gas emissions reductions, to disclose information supporting those claims — but vague and conflicting language in the statute poses multiple problems for businesses, say John Rousakis and Chris Bowman at O'Melveny.
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Series
Competing In Dressage Makes Me A Better Lawyer
My lifelong participation in the sport of dressage — often called ballet on horses — has proven that several skills developed through training and competition are transferable to legal work, especially the ability to harness focus, persistence and versatility when negotiating a deal, says Stephanie Coco at V&E.
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Harmonizing Agricultural And Clean Energy Goals
Congress' extension of the Farm Bill offers a chance to more thoroughly consider innovation and investments that could transform the competition between farmers and solar developers into synergistic agrivoltaic systems, which use land for both agriculture and solar energy generation, say attorneys at Husch Blackwell.
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CFTC Moves May Boost Interest In Voluntary Carbon Markets
As companies try to reduce their net greenhouse gas emissions, many have been cautious about embracing voluntary carbon credit markets — but recent moves by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission to regulate this sector may address some of its well-known challenges, say Deborah North and Laura Daugherty at Cleary.
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3 Strategies For Aggressive Judgment Enforcement
As illustrated by the many creditors of Citgo Petroleum Corp. who may walk away empty-handed — despite the company's court-ordered sale — it is important to start investigating counterparty assets and planning for enforcement even before obtaining a judgment, says Brian Asher at Asher Research.
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Musk Pay Package Ruling Offers Detailed Lesson On Del. Law
Anat Alon-Beck and John Livingstone at Case Western Reserve University discuss the specifics that led Delaware's chancellor to rescind Elon Musk's $55.8 billion Tesla pay package on Jan. 30, how the state’s entire fairness doctrine played into the ruling, and its bigger-picture impact on the executive compensation landscape.
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Key Maritime Law Issues In 2024: Election-Year Unknowns
In the final installment of this three-part article reviewing the top challenges for the maritime industry this year, Sean Pribyl at Holland & Knight examines how the uncertainty surrounding the forthcoming U.S. election may affect the maritime sector — especially companies involved in offshore wind and deep-sea mining.