Uproar over Forest Service plan to require media to get permits to take wilderness photos

A furor has ignited over a U.S. Forest Service plan to require members of the media, as well as commercial photographers, to pay up to $1,500 for a permit before taking video or still shots in some 36 million designated federal wilderness acres. Amidst criticism from both Democratic and Republican…

Sep 25, 2014 4:50 PM CDT

Citing climate change concerns, prosecutor drops criminal charges against coal protesters

A Massachusetts prosecutor has dropped criminal charges against two environmental activists who blocked a coal shipment to a power plant, saying he agreed with their point about climate change. Bristol District Attorney C. Samuel Sutter dropped a conspiracy charge against protesters Jay O’Hara and Ken Ward and downgraded other charges…

Sep 10, 2014 7:46 AM CDT

BP grossly negligent in Gulf oil spill, federal judge rules; company could face $18B in penalties

BP Plc was grossly negligent concerning the massive 2010 oil spill that occurred after a deadly explosion and fire at the Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico, a federal judge in New Orleans has ruled. The Thursday decision by U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier, who was selected…

Sep 4, 2014 5:30 PM CDT

Towns and cities can ban fracking in their borders, New York high court rules

New York’s highest court has upheld the “home rule” powers of even the smallest localities to ban fracking in order to preserve their rural and small-town character, Bloomberg News reports. Fracking, or hydraulic fracturing, is the practice by which oil and gas are extracted from rock by injecting high-pressure mixtures…

Jul 1, 2014 5:20 PM CDT

SCOTUS partially limits EPA’s greenhouse gas authority; Scalia says EPA got most of what it wanted

The U.S. Supreme Court partially curbed the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to regulate greenhouse gases in a decision released on Monday. Justice Antonin Scalia announced the opinion (PDF) for the court, which sided with industry on one greenhouse-gas issue and with the EPA on the other. Speaking from the bench,…

Jun 23, 2014 3:34 PM CDT

Kelly Hart opens New Orleans office with 6-lawyer team from Gordon Arata

A former Louisiana state lawmaker has opened a New Orleans office for Kelly Hart & Hallman. Headed by Loulan J. Pitre Jr., the office is the first outside Texas for the 140-attorney law firm, which will be known in New Orleans as Kelly Hart & Pitre, according to a law…

Jun 23, 2014 2:45 PM CDT

Superfund law doesn’t pre-empt state outer limit for filing tort suit, SCOTUS says

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled against a group of North Carolina property owners suing over contaminated water who claimed the state’s outer time limit for filing lawsuits didn’t apply. The property owners had argued the federal Superfund law governing the cleanup of hazardous waste pre-empted the state statute of…

Jun 9, 2014 7:09 PM CDT

California’s ban on standard-caged birds poses a chicken-egg problem

Jun 1, 2014 9:10 AM CDT

Patton Boggs and Squire Sanders reportedly could vote on a merger proposal this week

Partners at Patton Boggs and Squire Sanders could vote on a proposed merger as early as this week. Reuters and Wall Street Journal say unnamed sources familiar with the matter told them that the combined entity would result in an approximately-1,700 lawyer firm that would be known as Squire Patton…

May 19, 2014 6:56 PM CDT

Patton Boggs withdraws from hard-fought Chevron environmental case, will pay company $15M

In the latest development in a massive Ecuador environmental case that has put lawyers who won a $9.5 billion verdict for the plaintiffs under unusual pressure, Patton Boggs has agreed to withdraw from the case and pay $15 million to Chevron Corp. Although Patton Boggs was not lead counsel in…

May 7, 2014 4:35 PM CDT

BP cries foul, says crafty lawyers and claimants collected $500M in comp unrelated to oil spill

In a written settlement agreement concerning the massive Gulf of Mexico oil spill that began with a 2010 explosion on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig, BP agreed to a compensation formula to reimburse businesses. But now BP is unhappy about language that is being interpreted not only by plaintiffs lawyers…

May 5, 2014 10:00 PM CDT

Airlines and World Trade Center leaseholder don’t have to pay cleanup costs for 9/11 attacks

An appellate court has upheld a decision shielding American Airlines, United Airlines and the World Trade Center leaseholder from paying environmental cleanup costs relating to the 9/11 attacks in New York City. According to Reuters, a unanimous three-judge panel for the New York-based 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals held…

May 2, 2014 9:36 PM CDT

A ‘cringeworthy blunder’ by Scalia? New corrected opinion is issued after profs notice mistake

An error in a dissent by Justice Antonin Scalia on Tuesday did not go unnoticed—or uncorrected. The error was in Scalia’s dissent to a U.S. Supreme Court decision siding with the Environmental Protection Agency in its defense of the cross-state air pollution rule, report the Wall Street Journal Law Blog,…

Apr 30, 2014 6:42 PM CDT

SCOTUS backs EPA rule tackling problem of cross-state pollution

The U.S. Supreme Court has backed the Environmental Protection Agency in its interpretation of a “Good Neighbor” provision in the Clean Air Act. In a 6-2 opinion (PDF), the court said the EPA’s cross-state air pollution rule is a reasonable interpretation of the provision, which is designed to tackle the…

Apr 29, 2014 4:07 PM CDT

Does Sarbanes-Oxley apply to destruction of fish evidence? SCOTUS to decide

The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to decide whether a provision of the Sarbanes-Oxley law barring destruction of objects in a criminal probe applies to a fisherman accused of tossing overboard fish deemed too small by a conservation official. Fishing captain John Yates is appealing his conviction under the law,…

Apr 29, 2014 11:46 AM CDT