On April 5, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit decided the case of Kirk v. Schaeffler Group USA, Inc., et al., a personal injury action commenced in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri alleging injury resulting from the release of thousands of gallons of trichloroethylene (TCE)…
On March 30, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California decided the case of Californians for Renewable Energy, et al., v. EPA. The plaintiffs, public interest organizations located in several states, filed a lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) complaining that EPA failed to act on…
Recently, our colleague Rob James authored Getting the Deal Through: Gas Regulation 2018, in which he describes the domestic natural gas sector, including the natural gas production, liquefied natural gas (LNG) storage, pipeline transportation, distribution, commodity sales and trading segments and retail sales and usage. Reproduced with permission from Law…
The Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act’s (CERCLA, also known also as Superfund) stringent hazardous substance release reporting requirements are set forth as Section 103 of Superfund. A spill or release of a reportable quantity of a regulated hazardous substance must be reported immediately by the person in charge…
On March 29, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit decided an important oil spill cost recovery case: In re Petition of Frescati Shipping Co., Ltd. v. Citgo Asphalt Refining Co., et al. It is a case concerning the apportionment of oil spill-related cleanup costs and related affirmative defenses, including…
Legal arguments that the laws a state enacts which take into consideration the interests of its own citizens unfairly impede the free flow of interstate commerce are difficult to win, as demonstrated by two recent U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit rulings. On March 29, the Second Circuit issued…
Public discourse regarding climate change is becoming focused less on whether it is occurring, and more on what society can and should do to address or slow its progression. Geoengineering, which involves deliberately modifying the earth’s climate, is gaining traction in the scientific community and may prove to be a…
The Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2018 includes, at pages 1768-1786 of the bill, the “Brownfields Utilization, Investment, and Local Development Act of 2018,” also known as the “BUILD Act.” This is a bi-partisan bill whose enactment has been spurred by the realization there may be as many as 450,000 Brownfields sites around…
On March 20, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit decided the case of Marquette County Road Commission v. U.S. EPA, et al. The opinion will not be published in the Federal Reporter. Both the trial court and the Sixth Circuit rejected the Marquette County Road Commission’s argument that…
Many lawsuits have been filed in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims alleging that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ (Corps) management of the Missouri River flood control system has resulted in the serious flooding of many properties located in several states that are located adjacent to the river, and that…