Your Guide to Emerging Issues in Environmental Regulation and Litigation.
In what the Wall Street Journal touted as “(t)he First Climate Change Bankruptcy,” Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) filed for federal bankruptcy protection last month after claiming that it faced $30 billion dollars in liability for wildfires that ravaged California over the last several years. Investigators have determined that the California utility company caused at least …
The next batch of glyphosate-related trials are scheduled to take place over the next two months. As previously reported, Monsanto (which was acquired by Bayer last year) has been mired in toxic tort litigation over its glyphosate-based weed killer Roundup. The primary allegations center around whether certain exposure to glyphosate is causally related to the …
On January 1, 2019, the District of Columbia and the State of California became the latest jurisdictions to ban restaurants from offering their customers a plastic straw and other single-use plastics, including coffee stirrers. Seattle and Vancouver have similar straw bans in place and regulations are now proposed or pending in New York City, Miami …
A multistate coalition of Attorneys General, including California, Illinois, Maryland, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Vermont; and the California Air Resources Board, joined to file comments demanding that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) withdraw its proposed rule delaying by four years implementation of a regulation that would reduce emissions from …
In 2018, California has seen a spate of devastating wildfires that has already consumed more than 1,000,000 acres, caused scores of deaths, rampant property destruction, and millions of dollars in economic loss. Following a 2017 fire season that was nearly equally as tragic, a public debate has emerged regarding the origin of the increased frequency …
Last week, we reported that the judge who presided over the first trial related to alleged personal injuries from exposure to Monsanto’s glyphosate-containing herbicides slashed $211 million off of the $250 million awarded to the plaintiff in punitive damages. The reduction effectively brought the jury’s prior total award of $289 million down to $78.5 million …
We previously reported on the first glyphosate exposure case to go to a jury trial where a California jury awarded a former school groundskeeper $289 million. Of the $289 million award, $250 million were for punitive damages against Monsanto. On Monday, the judge who presided over the trial slashed $211 million off of the punitive …
Recently, the Assembly of the State of California approved the 100 Percent Clean Energy Act of 2018 or “SB100” which will require all energy used in the state to come from renewable sources by December 31, 2045. The bill, authored by State Senator Kevin de León, passed the California Senate last year, the Assembly on …
We recently reported on a $289 million verdict for plaintiff Dewayne Johnson against Monsanto Company in the state Superior Court of California, an astounding verdict by the jury who found that Mr. Johnson’s use of glyphosate-containing herbicides caused him to develop a type of cancer known as non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Monsanto will be appealing the verdict …
Well, it finally happened: in the first glyphosate exposure case to go to a jury trial, a San Francisco, California jury awarded a former school groundskeeper $289 million dollars. Back in June, we reported that DeWayne “Lee” Johnson, a groundskeeper for the school district in Benicia, California, had filed suit alleging that workplace exposure to …