Dupont and 3M knowingly contaminated drinking water across the US, lawsuits allege
New Hampshire is the latest state to file suit against a number of companies, including Dupont and 3M, for their roles in a nationwide drinking water contamination crisis. The lawsuit claims that the polluted water is the result of the manufacture and use of perfluorinated chemicals, a group of more than 4,000 compounds collectively known […]
Oregon Supreme Court overturns cap on non-economic damages
A man who lost his left leg after a garbage truck struck him in March 2015 in downtown Portland will get another chance to argue for an award of noneconomic damages exceeding $500,000. Oregon’s Supreme Court, in a decision announced Thursday, July 9, ruled that the $500,000 cap on such damages under state law violated […]
Stag Liuzza asks 5th Circuit to affirm Arkema Class
Last Thursday, Stag Liuzza and associated counsel Samuel Issacharoff asked the United States Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals to affirm a ruling that made our clients’ case against Arkema Chemical, a class action. In 2017, Arkema’s Crosby, Texas plant exploded when peroxide materials left at the facility during Hurricane Harvey overheated and combusted. In 2019, […]
NOLA Reporters Win Environmental Journalism Award
The Times-Picayune and The Advocate have been honored with a prestigious award from the Society of Environmental Journalists for the newspaper’s series “Polluter’s Paradise,” published last year with the nonprofit newsroom ProPublica. The series won the SEJ’s Kevin Carmody Award for Outstanding Investigative Reporting for a large newsroom, the top division in the contest, the […]
2019: deadliest for environmental activists
Last year, 212 environmental activists and land defenders were murdered globally, making 2019 the most deadly year for people resisting extractive industries or protecting endangered species, according to Global Witness’ latest annual report. Some of the killings are perpetrated by government forces, while others are ordered by mining companies or other industries. Most go unsolved. “It’s […]
Seafloor damage from BP spill vastly underestimated
After BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded on April 20, 2010, Paul Montagna was given the job of rushing into the blackened seas to find out how much harm the nation’s biggest oil disaster was doing to the creatures on the sea bottom — the tiny, barely understood and rarely seen organisms that quite literally […]
5 myths about lawsuits
Suing is supposedly as American as apple pie. The right to a jury trial in lawsuits is enshrined in the Seventh Amendment. And the portrayal of civil suits is central to American popular culture, from John Grisham’s novels to Judge Judy Sheindlin’s reality TV courtroom. But what people learn from civics classes, popular fiction and […]
Plugging Louisiana’s ‘orphaned’ wells could boost industry, cut emissions
A federally funded stimulus program aimed at plugging the growing number of “orphan” oil and gas wells could greatly reduce pollution while giving a much-needed boost to the state’s ailing oil industry, a new report says. As Congress considers a new stimulus package of several trillion dollars to assist with the economic impacts from the […]
Texas Petrochemical Facilities Get A Pass On Chemical Leak Monitoring
Since March, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality has received more than 150 requests to waive environmental regulations from companies that say they can’t comply because of the pandemic, state records show. Requests came from major oil and gas companies, like ExxonMobil, Marathon Petroleum and Shell. A chunk of the requests were administrative, with companies […]
Fracking boom ends, but environmental impact remains
Throughout the mid-2000s, the controversial fracking boom in the United States upended the global energy industry. America went from one of the world’s largest importers of foreign oil to the world’s largest producer of natural gas and crude oil over the course of just one decade. The supposed energy independence, which the Trump administration and its supporters have touted as […]