On September 14, the Arizona Court of Appeals, Division II, ruled that a trial court decision to release climate scientists’ emails had improperly ignored an Arizona statutory protection for university records. In this case, the Energy & Environment Legal Institute (“E&E Legal”) has been attempting to use open records laws […]
Climate Litigation
258 posts
By Dena Adler It has been widely reported that Hurricanes Harvey and Irma inundated industrial plants, wastewater treatment plants, and Superfund sites, causing a stew of toxic chemicals and sewage to leak into floodwaters and releasing almost 1 million pounds of seven deadly pollutants into the air. The Union of […]
By Michael Burger This past July, three local governments in California filed three different lawsuits in California state courts, claiming that the extraction, promotion, and sale of fossil fuels by a group of oil, gas, and coal companies constituted torts under a number of different state common law theories. (I […]
On August 21, the federal District Court for the District of Columbia upheld the decision by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to withhold NOAA climate scientists’ research documents from release to the conservative group Judicial Watch. Judicial Watch sought to use the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) – […]
By Jessica Wentz This week, federal courts issued decisions on two cases involving questions pertaining to the scope of environmental review for fossil fuel production and transportation projects. Among other things, these cases examined the extent to which agencies had complied with obligations under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) […]
By Michael B. Gerrard Donald Trump’s operating principles as relates to environmental regulation are: Regulations kill jobs; they are all costs, no benefits; we should do away with as many as we can. The U.S. should strive for “energy dominance” in the world, trying to follow the lead of those […]
Jessica Wentz and Susan Biniaz Earlier this week, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals vacated a 2015 EPA rulemaking aimed at phasing out the use of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), a potent class of greenhouse gas emissions which were introduced as a substitute for ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs) in the […]
Each month, Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer LLP (APKS) and the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law collect and summarize developments in climate-related litigation, which we also add to our U.S. and non-U.S. climate litigation charts. If you know of any cases we have missed, please email us at columbiaclimate at gmail dot com. […]