Toxic Tort

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New York Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman said Monday he would sue the federal government if it didn’t immediately conduct a full environmental review of proposed hydraulic fracturing (“hydrofracking”) regulations for an area that includes the New York City watershed. …
Read More New York AG Threatens to Sue Federal Government Over Hydrofracking

Attorneys for Kenneth Feinberg, the administrator of BP’s $20 billion claims fund for the Deepwater Horizon disaster argued Tuesday that the Louisiana federal judge overseeing the multidistrict litigation against BP plc lacked legal authority to regulate the claims process. …
Read More BP’s Claims Administrator Argues Court Intervention Regarding $20 Billion Fund is ‘Unlawful’ and ‘Unnecessary’

Natural gas obtained from shale formations using the controversial method of hydraulic fracturing (“hydrofracking”) have a higher greenhouse gas footprint than when obtained from conventional methods, according to a study recently released by the academic journal Climate Change Letters. …
Read More Hydrofracking: Study Finds “Shale Gas” May Have Greater GHG Footprint Than Coal

Japan is planning to raise the nuclear alert level at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant to a maximum seven (“Major Event”) on the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale (INES), putting this emergency on a par with the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. …
Read More Japan Raises Nuclear Alert Level Not Seen Since Chernobyl

The Supreme Court has handed down its decision in Sienkiewicz v Greif. The UK’s highest appeal court was reviewing the application of the “Fairchild exception” to single rather than multiple exposure cases. We reported on the Court of Appeal decision here. …
Read More UK: Sienkiewicz: Another Decision About the UK’s “Special” Mesothelioma Jurisprudence

Kenneth Feinberg, the administrator of BP PLC’s $20 billion claim fund, recently stated that it is too soon to say whether liability payments related to the Deepwater Horizon disaster will end up exhausting all of the $20 billion BP set aside for all claims. …
Read More Deepwater Horizon Disaster: How’s BP’s $20 Billion Claim Fund Holding Up?

The Gulf Coast Claims Facility (“GCCF”) — the agency responsible for doling out the $20 billion fund that was set up by BP as a result of the April 20, 2010 Deepwater Horizon incident (the “Spill”) — has issued its Protocol for the submission and resolution of Interim and Final Claims. …
Read More BP Spill Update: GCCF issues Protocol for Interim and Final Claims

President Obama’s ordered investigation of the BP disaster seems to lend support to BP’s own conclusions about the disaster and challenges congressional claims – as well as those made by others – that BP, Transocean and Halliburton made decisions that sacrificed safety to cut costs. …
Read More Federal BP Spill Panel: No Evidence that Money Trumped Safety in Deepwater Horizon Disaster