Your Guide to Emerging Issues in Environmental Regulation and Litigation.
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 …
Earlier in 2017, we reported the Third Circuit Court of Appeals’ decision to reinstate a landowner’s challenge to the Delaware River Basin Commission’s (DRBC) moratorium on hydraulic fracturing in the 24 county region, spanning across parts of Pennsylvania, New York, Delaware, and New Jersey. In that decision (Wayne Land & Mineral Group LLC v. Del. River Basin Comm’n), the court held that the definition of the …
For every barrel of oil drilled in Texas, four-to-five barrels of wastewater are produced. The abundance of untreated water has led the EPA to consider whether to permit oil drillers in Texas to discharge wastewater directly into local rivers and streams, avoiding the complicated and costly process of trucking the water to underground wells that …
On October 15, 2018, Judge Ann Aiken of the U.S.D.C. for the District of Oregon denied the federal government’s motion for judgment on the pleadings and motion for summary judgment in the Juliana lawsuit filed by 21 minors. As previously explained in this blog, the minors allege that the government has violated their constitutional rights …
Last week, a San Francisco judge issued a tentative ruling on the defendant Monsanto Company’s Motion for Judgment Notwithstanding the Verdict, and their Motion for a New Trial. This ruling threatens to gut the $289 million dollar verdict ($39M compensatory and $250M punitives) that the plaintiff Dewayne Johnson secured this summer over the company that manufactures …
It’s been written about exhaustively in PFAS circles: the C8 Science Panel and its “probable link” findings between PFOA and various diseases. This was a groundbreaking study that was part of a settlement agreement in watershed litigation that ultimately led to a whopping $671 million payout for over 3,000 individual plaintiffs. The defendant, DuPont, had …
The federal government has again sought a stay in the climate change lawsuit filed by 21 minors, known as the Juliana case. The lawsuit was filed in 2015 against President Obama and numerous federal agencies, claiming that the executive branch contributed to climate change in violation of the children’s rights under the Fifth and Ninth …
One of the many pitfalls in Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) compliance is navigating the interplay between cost recovery actions under CERCLA § 107(a) and contribution actions under CERCLA § 113(f). In general, parties who incur costs to respond to environmental contamination gain a cause of action under § 107(a) against other …
Recently, a Pennsylvania Appellate Court decided to permit the enforcement of a monetary penalty levied upon a driller, totaling over $1.1 million, stemming from the delay of maintenance to leaks in a damaged liner of an impoundment used to contain wastewater from hydraulic fracturing operations. In EQT Production Company v. Department of Environmental Protection, Docket # …
On September 27, 2018, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the District Court’s ruling in Coalition for Competitive Elec., et al. v. Zibelman, et al., and determined that New York State’s ZEC program is neither field nor conflict preempted. No. 17-2654, 2018 WL 4622696 (2nd Cir. Sept. 27, 2018). Moreover, the court found that …