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Environmental
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January 07, 2025
Eckert Seamans Adds Former Trump Interior Dept. Atty
Eckert Seamans Cherin & Mellott LLC is the latest firm to get in on the exploding lateral movement in the energy legal market following the 2024 presidential election, adding a former Trump administration attorney who served in a first-of-its-kind role in the first administration's Interior Department.
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January 07, 2025
6 Firms Guide $5.6B PE-Backed Deal For GFL Unit
Six law firms are guiding a deal disclosed Tuesday that will see funds managed by affiliates of Apollo and BC Partners purchase the environmental services business of GFL Environmental Inc. at an enterprise value of 8 billion Canadian dollars ($5.6 billion).
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January 07, 2025
CFTC Chair Behnam To Step Down When Trump Takes Office
U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chair Rostin Behnam announced Tuesday that he will resign his chairmanship on Inauguration Day in order to make way for new agency leadership under incoming President Donald Trump, who has yet to name Behnam's successor.
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January 07, 2025
Mintz Environmental Atty Joins Crowell & Moring In SF
Crowell & Moring LLP is boosting its California environmental team, announcing Tuesday it is bringing in an environmental expert from Mintz Levin Cohn Ferris Glovsky and Popeo PC as a partner in its San Francisco office.
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January 06, 2025
Exxon Says Calif. AG, Green Groups Defamed Recycling Effort
Exxon Mobil Corp. claims California's attorney general and a coalition of conservation groups have disparaged its reputation by declaring that the petrochemical company misled people about the effectiveness of plastic recycling and that its "advanced recycling" doesn't mitigate the problem, according to a lawsuit filed Monday in Texas federal court.
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January 06, 2025
Nikola Investors Win Class Cert. In Securities Fraud Litigation
An Arizona federal judge on Monday certified a class of investors accusing Nikola Corp. of inflating its stock price by exaggerating its ability to manufacture electric trucks, ruling that the shareholders have shown their case warrants the class treatment more than four years after they first sued.
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January 06, 2025
EPA Adds 9 PFAS To Its Toxics Release Inventory List
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency added nine so-called forever chemicals to the list of chemicals covered by its Toxics Release Inventory, or TRI, thereby requiring facilities that manufacture such chemicals above set quantities to report the amount they release into the environment.
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January 06, 2025
Edelson Must Share Info In Tort Case, Colo. Judge Says
A Colorado state judge has ordered Edelson PC to provide information about advertising in a toxic tort case over ethylene oxide emissions from a medical sterilization facility in Lakewood, with a bellwether trial set for this month.
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January 06, 2025
New Rules Won't Lift Political Clouds Over Hydrogen Projects
The Biden administration's new rules to make hydrogen production tax credits more accessible for project developers and investors may not move the needle much for the industry given President-elect Donald Trump's vow to at least partially repeal the statute that created the credits.
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January 06, 2025
Farm Owners, Rail Co. Spar Over Toxic Spill Trial Evidence
Mississippi landowners fired back at a Canadian National Railway unit's attempt to block a train derailment report containing its admissions of fault from an upcoming trial in Mississippi federal court, saying the company's claims that the report is incomplete "ring hollow."
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January 06, 2025
Feds Hit Georgia Developer With Suit Over Native Artifacts
The United States has accused a Georgia developer of violating its Clean Water Act permit by illegally filling in wetlands, so it could build residences on a floodplain even though it knew about the presence of protected archaeological sites and cultural objects on the property.
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January 06, 2025
Mich. Residents Say Solar Investors Can't Arbitrate Fraud Suit
Michigan residents who allege Florida investment firms funded a company that duped them into buying defective solar panels have urged a federal judge to deny the firms' bid to arbitrate or dismiss the claims, saying the court has already rejected the investors' arguments.
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January 06, 2025
Biden Closes Off Coastal Areas To Offshore Drilling
President Joe Biden on Monday announced a ban on new offshore oil and gas drilling in more than 625 million acres of U.S. waters on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts and in Alaska after determining that the environmental and economic risks and harms outweigh the benefits of drilling.
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January 06, 2025
Paul Hastings, Cravath Steer Pork Giant Smithfield's IPO Filing
Pork producer Smithfield Foods Inc. on Monday submitted the year's first filing for an initial public offering, part of a spinoff from China's WH Group Ltd., represented by Paul Hastings LLP and underwriters' counsel Cravath Swaine & Moore LLP.
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January 06, 2025
Nippon, US Steel Hit Back With Suits After Biden Blocks Deal
Japan's Nippon Steel Corp. and U.S. Steel Corp. have filed two lawsuits following President Joe Biden's Friday decision to block their planned $14.9 billion merger, claiming Monday that the deal was blocked for "purely political reasons."
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January 03, 2025
3rd Circ. Won't Hit Brakes On NY Congestion Toll Launch
New York City's highly litigated congestion pricing toll program began Sunday morning after the Third Circuit denied an emergency motion for an injunction to delay it while an appeal by the state of New Jersey unfolds.
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January 03, 2025
Energy Cos. Ask Top Calif. Court To End Climate Change Suits
A half-dozen global energy giants urged California's top court Thursday to review a lower court's decision allowing climate change suits against them to proceed, arguing that California courts don't have jurisdiction over claims stemming from global fossil fuel use.
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January 03, 2025
3 Firms Seek $36M Fee Award In 'Historic' NJ PFAS Deal
The Law Offices of John K. Dema PC, Kelley Drye & Warren LLP and Cohn Lifland Pearlman Herrmann & Knopf LLP have asked a New Jersey state court to award $36.7 million in attorney fees for their work in securing a $393 million deal over "forever chemical" contamination by Belgian chemical company Solvay as special counsel to the Garden State.
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January 03, 2025
Treasury Unveils Flexible Final Regs For Hydrogen Tax Credit
The U.S. Treasury Department released final rules Friday for hydrogen production tax credits that allow fuel produced using nuclear-generated electricity or methane to qualify for the incentive, making the regulations more flexible than what was proposed last year.
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January 03, 2025
Biden Blocks $14.9B US Steel-Nippon Deal
President Joe Biden on Friday formally blocked the planned $14.9 billion merger between Japan's Nippon Steel and U.S. Steel, making good on a prior pledge to keep the latter steelmaker U.S.-owned in one of his final flexes of executive power over cross-border deals.
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January 02, 2025
Samsung Sued Over Alleged PFAS In Galaxy Watch Wristbands
Samsung has been putting "forever chemicals" in the wristbands it sells for its smartwatches and fitness trackers, according to a proposed class action filed in California federal court by a Los Angeles resident who cites a newly published scientific study.
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January 02, 2025
9th Circ. Revives Pot Fines Suit Against Calif. County
A proposed class of Northern California landowners can pursue a swath of constitutional claims against Humboldt County officials with the Ninth Circuit ruling they plausibly pled the county was overzealous in its efforts to crack down on allegedly illegal cannabis growers.
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January 02, 2025
Calif. Says Insurers Must Expand Coverage In High-Risk Areas
California Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara announced Monday that carriers will be required to increase coverage in areas of the state that are at high risk of wildfires, marking the final major step in the department's historic regulatory effort to restabilize the state's insurance market.
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January 02, 2025
Solar Panel Tech Co. Faces Investor Suit Over Project Delays
Solar power software and tracking company Nextracker Inc. has been hit with a proposed shareholder class action in California federal court alleging it misled investors about production delays it faced following a spike in demand caused by tax credits offered through the Inflation Reduction Act.
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January 02, 2025
Feds Ink $1B Supply Deal With Constellation Nuke Plants
The U.S. General Services Administration said Thursday it has cut the largest energy procurement deal in its history after purchasing 10 million megawatt-hours of electricity from Baltimore-based Constellation New Energy Inc. in combined energy contracts totaling more than $1 billion.
Expert Analysis
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Nuclear Waste Storage Questions Justices May Soon Address
The petition for the U.S. Supreme Court to review U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission v. Texas stands out for a number of reasons — including a deepening circuit split regarding the NRC's nuclear waste storage authority under the Atomic Energy Act, and broader administrative law implications, say attorneys at MoloLamken.
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Series
After Chevron: Conservation Rule Already Faces Challenges
The Bureau of Land Management's interpretation of land "use" in its Conservation and Landscape Health Rule is contrary to the agency's past practice and other Federal Land Policy and Management Act provisions, leaving the rule exposed in four legal challenges that may carry greater force in the wake of Loper Bright, say Stacey Bosshardt and Stephanie Regenold at Perkins Coie.
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Opinion
Big Oil Climate Ruling Sets Dangerous Liability Precedent
The recent Maryland court dismissal of Baltimore's case seeking to hold BP responsible for climate damage mischaracterized the city's injuries as divorced from the conduct that caused them, and could allow companies that conceal the dangers of their products to escape liability, says Randall Abate at George Washington University Law School.
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Opinion
3rd. Circ. Got It Right On Cancer Warning Claims Preemption
The Third Circuit's recent, eminently sensible ruling in a failure-to-warn case against Roundup manufacturer Monsanto, holding that the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act preempts state law claims, provides a road map that other courts should adopt, says Lawrence Ebner at the Atlantic Legal Foundation.
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How Methods Are Evolving In Textualist Interpretations
Textualists at the U.S. Supreme Court are increasingly considering new methods such as corpus linguistics and surveys to evaluate what a statute's text communicates to an ordinary reader, while lower courts even mull large language models like ChatGPT as supplements, says Kevin Tobia at Georgetown Law.
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5 Ways To Confront Courtroom Technology Challenges
Recent cybersecurity incidents highlight the vulnerabilities of our reliance on digital infrastructure, meaning attorneys must be prepared to navigate technological obstacles inside the courtroom, including those related to data security, presentation hardware, video playback and more, says Adam Bloomberg at IMS Legal Strategies.
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ESA Ruling May Jeopardize Gulf Of Mexico Drilling Operations
A Maryland federal court's recent decision in Sierra Club v. National Marine Fisheries Service, vacating key Endangered Species Act analyses of oil and gas operations in the Gulf of Mexico, may create a gap in guidance that could expose operators to enforcement risk and even criminal liability, say attorneys at Holland & Knight.
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Why Attorneys Should Consider Community Leadership Roles
Volunteering and nonprofit board service are complementary to, but distinct from, traditional pro bono work, and taking on these community leadership roles can produce dividends for lawyers, their firms and the nonprofit causes they support, says Katie Beacham at Kilpatrick.
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Firms Must Offer A Trifecta Of Services In Post-Chevron World
After the U.S. Supreme Court’s Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo decision overturning Chevron deference, law firms will need to integrate litigation, lobbying and communications functions to keep up with the ramifications of the ruling and provide adequate counsel quickly, says Neil Hare at Dentons.
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5 Tips To Succeed In A Master Of Laws Program And Beyond
As lawyers and recent law school graduates begin their Master of Laws coursework across the country, they should keep a few pointers in mind to get the most out of their programs and kick-start successful careers in their practice areas, says Kelley Miller at Reed Smith.
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Opinion
Portland's Gross Receipts Tax Oversteps City's Authority
Recent measures by Portland, Oregon, that expand the voter-approved scope of the Clean Energy Surcharge on certain retail sales eviscerate the common meaning of the word "retail" and exceed the city's chartered authority to levy tax, say Nikki Dobay at Greenberg Traurig and Jeff Newgard at Peak Policy.
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Series
After Chevron: SEC Climate And ESG Rules Likely Doomed
Under the U.S. Supreme Court's recent decision in Loper Bright, without agency deference, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's climate disclosure and environmental, social and governance rules would likely be found lacking in statutory support and vacated by the courts, says Justin Chretien at Carlton Fields.
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When Trauma Colors Testimony: How To Help Witnesses
As stress-related mental health issues continue to rise, trial attorneys must become familiar with a few key trauma-informed strategies to help witnesses get back on track — leaning in to the counselor aspect of their vocations, say Ava Hernández and Steve Wood at Courtroom Sciences.
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Series
Being An Opera Singer Made Me A Better Lawyer
My journey from the stage to the courtroom has shown that the skills I honed as an opera singer – punctuality, memorization, creativity and more – have all played a vital role in my success as an attorney, says Gerard D'Emilio at GableGotwals.
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Navigating The Uncertain Landscape Of Solar Tariffs
Solar cell and module manufacturers, exporters and importers must navigate an uncertain compliance landscape, given ongoing challenges to U.S. Department of Commerce antidumping and countervailing duty determinations, which have been mounted both by U.S. and non-U.S. manufacturers, say attorneys at Morgan Lewis.