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Environmental
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June 25, 2024
Bulk Of Colo. Climate Case Against Oil Giants Beats Dismissal
A Colorado state judge has paved the way for a county's lawsuit against major oil and gas companies that aims to hold them liable for damages caused by climate change, rejecting bids to toss claims for public and private nuisance, conspiracy and unjust enrichment.
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June 25, 2024
4th Circ. Revives Arranger Liability Claims In Superfund Suit
The Fourth Circuit revived claims Tuesday against six companies that arranged the disposal of hazardous waste in the 68th Street dump site in Baltimore County, Maryland, ruling that a lower court was wrong to say the companies needed to know that the waste was hazardous to be liable for cleanup costs.
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June 25, 2024
Cummins Brass Face Investor Suit For $2B Clean Air Act Deal
Executives and directors of engine manufacturer Cummins Inc. have been hit with a shareholder derivative suit accusing them of concealing the company's use of unlawful emissions control devices in certain engines, which eventually resulted in a record $1.68 billion fine against the company and more than $326 million in related payments.
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June 25, 2024
Norfolk Southern Torched In NTSB Final Derailment Findings
Norfolk Southern used "reprehensible" tactics to interfere with the investigation into last year's derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, and pushed for an "unnecessary" controlled vent and burn of highly flammable vinyl chloride during the accident's chaotic aftermath, the National Transportation Safety Board said Tuesday.
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June 25, 2024
GOP Lawmakers Urge 8th Circ. To Quash SEC's Climate Rule
A group of 35 Republican lawmakers on Tuesday moved to weigh in on the consolidated challenge to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's recently adopted climate disclosure rule, arguing that the Eighth Circuit should vacate the measure due to a lack of clear congressional authorization.
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June 25, 2024
Split DC Circ. Backs Bush-Era Mining Deregulation
A divided D.C. Circuit panel on Tuesday upheld a Bush-era mining regulation that removed limits on how much land near a mining site can be used for secondary operations like waste disposal, ruling against environmental groups that accused regulators of illegally walking back a more restrictive interpretation of federal mining law.
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June 25, 2024
Flint Judge Wants To Keep City 'Motivated' To Fix Lead Pipes
A Michigan federal judge on Tuesday all but approved a proposal from the state to step in and help the city of Flint finish replacing lead water service lines and restoring properties for residents, noting the city's repeated failures to meet its obligations under a 7-year-old settlement agreement.
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June 25, 2024
Ga. County Wants Battery Fire Suit Sent Back To State Court
A Georgia county that sued an electric vehicle battery manufacturer for allegedly dumping hundreds of batteries that led to a massive fire at a local recycling plant asked a federal judge Monday to send the case back to state court.
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June 25, 2024
Conn. Firefighters Sue Over PFAS In Protective Gear
Connecticut firefighters slapped 3M, DuPont and 17 others with a proposed class action on Tuesday, alleging they have been exposed to dangerous levels of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, contained in their protective gear manufactured and sold by the companies.
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June 25, 2024
DOD Watchdog Says Calif. Bases Must Prep Climate Plans
The U.S. Department of Defense's Office of the Inspector General revealed in a report that the leaders of four California defense facilities have failed to incorporate mandatory climate-related environmental risks, infrastructure vulnerabilities and risk-reduction measures into their master plans.
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June 25, 2024
NC Development Bill Violates UN Declaration, Tribe Says
A North Carolina tribe is fighting state legislation that it says does not assure protections over one of the most significant archaeological Native American discoveries in recent years, arguing its language violates international law and centuries-old treaties.
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June 25, 2024
Oil Co. Accused Of Duping Consumers With Biodiesel Product
A Massachusetts home heating oil dealer falsely told consumers they were purchasing an environmentally friendly biodiesel product, a proposed class action filed in state court on Monday alleges.
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June 25, 2024
Ariz. Lawmakers Say State Has No Interest In Monument Fight
The Arizona State Legislature says Gov. Katie Hobbs and Attorney General Kris Mayes can't show that they have an interest in lawsuits against President Joe Biden's proclamation designating an Indigenous site in the Grand Canyon region a national monument and they shouldn't be allowed to intervene in the litigation.
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June 25, 2024
Exxon Bid For Avangrid Docs In Greenwash Case Faces Doubt
A Massachusetts judge on Tuesday questioned the relevance of potentially millions of wind energy company Avangrid's documents being sought by ExxonMobil in its defense of a greenwashing case brought by the state.
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June 25, 2024
Drilling Permit Challenge Should Stay Dead, DOI Tells DC Circ.
The U.S. Department of the Interior told the D.C. Circuit a federal judge correctly ruled environmental groups cannot challenge the federal approval of thousands of drilling permits in New Mexico and Wyoming because they failed to establish any particularized injury.
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June 25, 2024
Litigation Pro Rejoins GRSM50 In Calif. From DeHay & Elliston
Gordon Rees Scully Mansukhani LLP has strengthened its litigation bench with a partner in Walnut Creek, California, who arrived from DeHay & Elliston LLP and who worked for six years earlier in his career as a senior counsel for GRSM50.
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June 25, 2024
Judge Stays Food Supplier's Wastewater Suit Against Ga. City
A Georgia federal judge on Monday agreed to stay a lawsuit in which a food supplier alleged the city of Dawsonville, Georgia, and seven city officials threatened to shut off water and sewage service to its poultry plant based on $1.5 million in illegally assessed wastewater discharge penalties.
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June 24, 2024
Chevron's $120M Trial Loss Reinstated By Calif. Appeals Court
A California appellate court says Chevron cannot get another trial after a jury found it liable for the negligent operation of an oil field, overturning a lower court's ruling that the company was entitled to a new trial because a juror failed to disclose a decades-old criminal conviction.
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June 24, 2024
PacifiCorp To Pay Another $150M To Resolve Wildfire Claims
PacifiCorp will shell out another $150 million to roughly 380 plaintiffs resolving "substantially all individual claims" stemming from the 2020 Slater wildfire in California, the company announced Monday, adding to the hundreds of millions of dollars the utility has already paid over wildfire-related claims.
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June 24, 2024
EPA Says Army Corps Doesn't Belong In Pebble Mine Dispute
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is urging an Alaska federal judge to refuse a mining company's bid to amend a lawsuit in order to reverse an Army Corps of Engineers decision denying the controversial Pebble Mine project a permit.
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June 24, 2024
States Attack Conservation Leasing In New Public Lands Rule
North Dakota, Idaho and Montana are challenging the Bureau of Land Management's move to prioritize conservation in public land regulation, claiming the agency's recent public lands rule "upends" long-standing federal leasing processes and reorients land use mandates against the priorities of federal law.
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June 24, 2024
Toyota Accused Of Misleading Investors Over Emission Tests
Toyota and its top brass misled investors by understating in U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filings its role in falsifying emissions and fuel-economy data, which led to a drop in stock price when the truth came out, according to a proposed class action filed Monday in California federal court.
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June 24, 2024
5th Circ. Weighs 'Binding Authority' Of Gulf Fishery Council
A Fifth Circuit panel on Monday pushed back against the government's assertion that members of a council tasked with regulating fishing in federal waters do not count as federal officers, saying the council's ability to limit changes to federal rules "sounds like a legally binding authority."
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June 24, 2024
Sierra Club Says Mich. Power Co. Liable For Illegal Pollution
The Sierra Club and a small town in Michigan are looking to hold a power plant partially liable for air pollution produced by a steel factory, claiming in amended complaints filed Monday that many of the factory's regulatory compliance failures can be traced back to energy company employees.
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June 24, 2024
Ill. Landowners Challenge FERC Moves On $7B Power Line
Illinois residents, farmers and landowners launched a fresh challenge to the $7 billion Grain Belt Express high-voltage power line, telling the D.C. Circuit that when the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission approved an amended negotiated rate authority, it ignored clean energy giant Invenergy's unsanctioned purchase of the project in 2020.
Expert Analysis
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Googling Prospective Jurors Is Usually A Fool's Errand
Though a Massachusetts federal court recently barred Google from Googling potential jurors in a patent infringement case, the company need not worry about missing evidence of bias, because internet research of jury pools usually doesn’t yield the most valuable information — voir dire and questionnaires do, says Sarah Murray at Trialcraft.
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Reducing Carbon Footprint Requires A Tricky Path For CRE
As real estate owners find themselves caught between rapidly evolving environmental, social and governance initiatives and complicated societal debate, they will need to carefully establish formal plans to remain both competitive and compliant, say Michael Kuhn and Mahira Khan at Jackson Walker.
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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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A Look Into How Jurors Reach High Damages Awards
In the wake of several large jury awards, Richard Gabriel and Emily Shaw at Decision Analysis shed light on challenges that jurors have in deciding them, the nonevidentiary and extra-legal methods they use to do so, and new research about the themes and jury characteristics of high-damages jurors.
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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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Preparing For A New Wave Of Litigation Under Silicosis Rules
After the Division of Occupational Safety and Health of California issued an emergency temporary standard to combat noncompliance with assessments of workers' exposure to particles of crystalline silica, companies that manufacture, distribute or sell silica-containing products will need aggressive case-specific discovery to navigate a new wave of litigation, say attorneys at Dechert.
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Managing Competing Priorities In Witness Preparation
There’s often a divide between what attorneys and witnesses want out of the deposition process, but litigation teams can use several strategies to resolve this tension and help witnesses be more comfortable with the difficult conditions of testifying, say Ava Hernández and Steve Wood at Courtroom Sciences.
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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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Understanding And Working With The Millennials On Your Jury
Every trial attorney will be facing a greater proportion of millennials on their jury, as they now comprise the largest generation in the U.S., and winning them over requires an understanding of their views on politics, corporations and damages, says Clint Townson at Townson Litigation Consulting.
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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.