Energy

  • December 10, 2024

    Utah Counties' Narrow NEPA Test Meets High Court Critics

    Utah counties looking to narrow courts' ability to review federal agencies' environmental analyses of proposed projects hit roadblocks Tuesday from skeptical U.S. Supreme Court justices and the U.S. Department of Justice, who said the proposed limits go too far.

  • December 10, 2024

    Judge Says Indiana Grid Project Law Is Discriminatory

    An Indiana federal judge has blocked the state's right of first refusal law granting Indiana-based utilities the first attempt at securing new transmission project contracts in the state, saying the law discriminates against out-of-state economic interests.

  • December 10, 2024

    Insurer QBE Settles Suit Over Failed $18M Wind Support Deal

    Belgium-based insurer QBE Europe has settled a lawsuit accusing it of wasting available policy limits on pointless litigation rather than make a reasonable offer in a separate $18 million dispute over a failed wind support vessel deal, according to a Tuesday filing.

  • December 10, 2024

    Google, TPG To Help Steer $20B Clean Energy Investment

    Google and an arm of private equity shop TPG that is focused on solutions to combat climate change revealed plans to partner with clean energy company Intersect Power to invest $20 billion in renewable power infrastructure by the end of the decade, with an initial plug of $800 million announced on Tuesday.

  • December 10, 2024

    Ex-Conn. Utility Execs Win Pretrial Diversion Bid In 2nd Case

    A Connecticut federal judge has approved pretrial diversion agreements between federal prosecutors and two former public utility executives, pausing a second prosecution as the duo prepare to serve prison sentences in a case alleging they misused public funds.

  • December 10, 2024

    Stellantis, CATL Invest Up To €4.1B For Battery Plant In Spain

    Automaker Stellantis announced Tuesday that it has formed a joint venture with Chinese battery maker CATL that sees the two investing up to €4.1 billion ($4.3 billion) to help build a large-scale European lithium iron phosphate battery plant in Spain.

  • December 10, 2024

    Eversource Charges 'Junk Fee' To Restore Service, Suit Says

    Utility company Eversource's $102 charge to restore service after a shutoff for nonpayment is a "junk fee" that exploits customers who can least afford it, a proposed class action filed in Massachusetts says.

  • December 09, 2024

    Petrobras Calls On Justices To Review Samsung RICO Suit

    The American subsidiary of Brazil's state-owned oil company called on the U.S. Supreme Court to unravel the Fifth Circuit's decision blocking its racketeering claim against Samsung Heavy Industries over an alleged $1.6 billion bribery scheme involving drillship contracts.

  • December 09, 2024

    Kellogg Retirees Say DOL's Brief Backs 6th Circ. Revival

    A proposed class of married Kellogg retirees alleging their pension annuity payouts were lowballed by the cereal company due to outdated mortality assumptions used in conversions is urging the Sixth Circuit to heed a recently filed brief from the U.S. Department of Labor backing workers seeking to revive a similar dispute in the Eleventh Circuit.

  • December 09, 2024

    EV Carmaker Lucid Wants To Shed More Of Inflated Biz Suit

    Electric carmaker Lucid Group has asked a California federal judge to toss most of the latest version of a proposed investor class action alleging its production forecasts were misleading, arguing that parts of the suit that remained intact after a recent dismissal order involved statements taken out of context.

  • December 09, 2024

    Mexico Found Liable For Axing Oil Drilling Contract

    An International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes tribunal has found that Mexico breached the North American Free Trade Agreement when a Mexican administrative court confirmed the termination of an oil drilling contract between the country's state-owned energy firm and Texas-based investors.

  • December 09, 2024

    DC Circ. Unsure Of Wading Into FERC Grid Plan Fight

    D.C. Circuit judges appeared reluctant on Monday to entertain the legality of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's 2023 rejection of a grid operator's plan to manage certain transmission project costs, given that the agency later approved related projects in May.

  • December 09, 2024

    Xcel Can't Hide Evidence In Marshall Fire Suit, Attys Say

    Attorneys representing more than 4,000 individuals suing Xcel Energy over a 2021 Colorado wildfire demand the utility release thousands of documents regarding the location of a power line that allegedly caused an ignition, claiming the information is being improperly withheld despite how critical it is to the case.

  • December 09, 2024

    BNSF Asks 9th Circ. To Upend Tribe's $400M Trespass Win

    BNSF Railway Co. has argued the Ninth Circuit should reverse a lower court's finding that the company owes a Washington tribe nearly $400 million for years of illegally running oil cars across tribal territory, saying the "massive penalty" is excessive because it strips away lawfully earned profits.

  • December 09, 2024

    Ill. Congresswoman Denies Undue Influence From Madigan

    U.S. Rep. Nikki Budzinski was called to the witness stand Monday in the racketeering trial of former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, where she testified that while she received multiple job recommendations from Madigan as a former senior aide to Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, those candidates were only hired if they were qualified.

  • December 09, 2024

    Beveridge & Diamond Picks Up Longtime DOJ Enviro Litigator

    Beveridge & Diamond PC has hired the former chief of the law and policy section at the U.S. Department of Justice's Environment and Natural Resources Division, who is bringing his more-than 26-year government experience in environmental law to the D.C. team, the firm announced Friday.

  • December 09, 2024

    Justices Spurn Worker's Challenge To 'Honest Belief' Firing

    The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to review a Fourth Circuit decision holding that a Baltimore utility's "honest belief" that a worker was misusing medical leave justified the employee's termination, according to high court orders released Monday.

  • December 07, 2024

    Up Next: Environmental Reviews, Wire Fraud & TM Awards

    The U.S. Supreme Court will hear its final set of oral arguments for the 2024 calendar year starting Monday, including disputes over the proper scope of federal environmental reviews and whether corporate affiliates can be ordered to pay disgorgement awards in trademark infringement disputes.

  • December 06, 2024

    DC Circ. Mulls If EPA Can Set Rules Based On Predicted Tech

    At least one member of the D.C. Circuit did not seem to be picking up what the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency was putting down in defense of a rule that would give coal-fired power plants until 2032 to meet certain emissions standards that critics claim are impossible.

  • December 06, 2024

    J&J Seeks New Talc Trial As Developer Seeks $30M More

    As Johnson & Johnson seeks to toss the underlying verdict, a real estate developer and cancer patient who was awarded $15 million in compensation from a talc trial jury has asked a Connecticut state judge to award another $30 million to punish the company for allegedly putting "profits over people."

  • December 06, 2024

    Feds Want Full DC Circ. To Reverse Panel's NEPA Regs Ruling

    Two D.C. Circuit judges who ruled a White House agency lacks authority to issue regulations implementing the National Environmental Policy Act violated a cornerstone legal tenet and must be overturned, according to the federal government.

  • December 06, 2024

    Shell, Equinor Creating UK Oil Giant As Sea Basin Matures

    Shell UK Ltd. and Equinor UK Ltd. are joining forces to create what they said will be the largest independent oil and gas company in the U.K., citing declining production in the "once-prolific basin" of the North Sea as the impetus for the 50-50 joint venture. 

  • December 06, 2024

    Ex-Conn. Utility Execs May Get Reprieve From 2nd Indictment

    Two former Connecticut utility company executives who are weeks away from beginning federal prison sentences entered pretrial diversion agreements with the government on Friday that would allow them to escape a second raft of charges alleging that they conspired to misuse public money.

  • December 06, 2024

    1st Circ. Affirms Mass. Wind Energy Permits

    A three-judge First Circuit panel rejected a pair of fishing industry challenges to environmental permits for the massive — and now paused — Vineyard Wind project off the coast of Massachusetts.

  • December 06, 2024

    Canada's Chinese Import Surtaxes Expected To Raise $334M

    Canada's new surtaxes on Chinese electric vehicles and steel and aluminum products are estimated to generate CA$473 million ($334 million) over the next five years, though the EV surtax on its own is likely to cause a dip in revenue, a government analysis said.

Expert Analysis

  • Applying High Court's Domestic Corruption Rulings To FCPA

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    After the U.S. Supreme Court narrowed the domestic corruption statutes in three decisions over the past year and a half, it’s worth evaluating whether these rulings may have an impact on Foreign Corrupt Practices Act enforcement, and if attorneys can use the court’s reasoning in international bribery cases, says James Koukios at MoFo.

  • How Multifamily Property Owners Can Plan For The EV Future

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    As the electric vehicle market expands, and federal and state incentives and mandates intended to promote EV use come into effect, owners and operators of multifamily residential properties should be prepared to meet the growing demand for onsite EV charging infrastructure, say Sydney Tucker and Andreas Wokutch at Frost Brown.

  • Conn. Court Split May Lead To Vertical Forum Shopping

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    As shown by a recent ruling in State v. Exxon Mobil, Connecticut state and federal courts are split on personal jurisdiction, and until the Connecticut Supreme Court steps in, parties may be incentivized to forum shop, causing foreign entities to endure costly litigation and uncertain liability, says Matthew Gibbons at Shipman & Goodwin.

  • Mental Health First Aid: A Brief Primer For Attorneys

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    Amid a growing body of research finding that attorneys face higher rates of mental illness than the general population, firms should consider setting up mental health first aid training programs to help lawyers assess mental health challenges in their colleagues and intervene with compassion, say psychologists Shawn Healy and Tracey Meyers.

  • Enviro Policy Trends That Will Continue Beyond The Election

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    Come October in a presidential election year, the policy world feels like a winner-take-all scenario, with the outcome of the vote determining how or even whether we are regulated — but there are several key ongoing trends that will continue to drive environmental regulation regardless of the election results, say J. Michael Showalter and Samuel Rasche at ArentFox Schiff.

  • Series

    Collecting Art Makes Me A Better Lawyer

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    The therapeutic aspects of appreciating and collecting art improve my legal practice by enhancing my observation skills, empathy, creativity and cultural awareness, says attorney Michael McCready.

  • Secret Service Failures Offer Lessons For Private Sector GCs

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    The Secret Service’s problematic response to two assassination attempts against former President Donald Trump this summer provides a crash course for general counsel on how not to handle crisis communications, says Keith Nahigian at Nahigian Strategies.

  • Opinion

    Supreme Court Must Halt For-Profit Climate Tort Proliferation

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    If the U.S. Supreme Court does not seize the opportunity presented by Honolulu v. Sunoco to reassert federal authority over interstate pollution regulation, the resulting frenzy of profit-driven environmental mass torts against energy companies will stunt American competitiveness and muddle climate policy, says Gale Norton at Liberty Energy.

  • Takeaways From TOTSA Settlement And Critical CFTC Dissent

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    The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission's recent settlement with TOTSA highlights the agency's commitment to enforcing market integrity and deterring manipulative practices, while Commissioner Caroline Pham's dissent to the settlement spotlights the need for transparency and consistency in enforcement actions, say attorneys at Davis Wright.

  • Litigation Inspiration: Honoring Your Learned Profession

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    About 30,000 people who took the bar exam in July will learn they passed this fall, marking a fitting time for all attorneys to remember that they are members in a specialty club of learned professionals — and the more they can keep this in mind, the more benefits they will see, says Bennett Rawicki at Hilgers Graben.

  • Opinion

    AI May Limit Key Learning Opportunities For Young Attorneys

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    The thing that’s so powerful about artificial intelligence is also what’s most scary about it — its ability to detect patterns may curtail young attorneys’ chance to practice the lower-level work of managing cases, preventing them from ever honing the pattern recognition skills that undergird creative lawyering, says Sarah Murray at Trialcraft.

  • Series

    Round-Canopy Parachuting Makes Me A Better Lawyer

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    Similar to the practice of law, jumping from an in-flight airplane with nothing but training and a few yards of parachute silk is a demanding and stressful endeavor, and the experience has bolstered my legal practice by enhancing my focus, teamwork skills and sense of perspective, says Thomas Salerno at Stinson.

  • Why Now Is The Time For Law Firms To Hire Lateral Partners

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    Partner and associate mobility data from the second quarter of this year suggest that there's never been a better time in recent years for law firms to hire lateral candidates, particularly experienced partners — though this necessitates an understanding of potential red flags, say Julie Henson and Greg Hamman at Decipher Investigative Intelligence.

  • Reassessing Lease Provisions To Account For ESG Initiatives

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    As companies seek to build ESG considerations into their businesses, it's crucial to understand how such initiatives can quickly become significant enough to compel reassessment of lease agreement provisions, and how best to modify leases accordingly, say Julian Freeman and Gabe Pitassi at Cox Castle.

  • Opinion

    FERC Penalty Adjudication Unconstitutional Under Jarkesy

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    The U.S. Supreme Court's holding in U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission v. Jarkesy that the SEC's use of in-house proceedings to adjudicate civil penalties is unconstitutional should equally apply to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's statutory penalty assessment schemes, say attorneys at Jenner & Block.

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