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In June 2023, the Texas Supreme Court narrowly ruled that the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) is protected by sovereign immunity laws, which generally protect government entities from civil lawsuits. In a 5–4 ruling, the all-Republican court found that ERCOT, which manages most of Texas’s power grid, qualifies for sovereign immunity because it “provides […]
Thirty Big Oil companies, including Chevron Corp., Citgo Petroleum Corp., Exxon Mobile Corp., and Shell Oil Products Co., have petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) to ask for its review of a combined group of climate change liability cases led by San Mateo County, California. The question presented to SCOTUS “encompasses a threshold issue that […]
In an opinion dated August 17, 2022, the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals upheld federal district court rulings in Delaware and New Jersey that state courts are the proper venue for two climate change lawsuits brought against big oil companies. Two different lawsuits, one filed by the City of Hoboken and the other by the […]
A federal jury found that a Massachusetts employer and his company retaliated against an employee who reported an on-the-job injury, the Department of Labor (DOL) announced on June 22. The jury awarded $650,000 in damages—$600,000 in punitive damages and $50,000 in compensatory damages—in the case. The DOL filed a lawsuit in February 2019 against Tara […]
Dr. Stanley D. Young, a former member of the EPA’s Scientific Advisory Council, filed suit on October 7, 2021, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia accusing the EPA of purging its advisory boards of industry members. “The [EPA] has a problem with dissent. In an unprecedented purge, EPA eliminated all industry […]
At the 2018 Connecticut Business & Industry Association (CBIA) Energy & Environment Conference, Kristen Sherman, Assistant General Counsel for UTC Aerospace Systems, discussed steps concerning outreach that businesses can take to prevent lawsuits. Though the topic of the discussion was vapor intrusion, the migration of vapor-forming chemicals from a subsurface source into soil and groundwater, […]