Environmental

  • March 06, 2025

    Calif. Woman Accuses Fla. Sugar Co. Of Greenwashing

    Florida Crystals Corp. is deceptively advertising sugar products as eco-friendly when it knows that its farming practices are "unnecessarily poisoning people and the planet," a Santa Cruz, California, woman has said in a proposed class action accusing the company of greenwashing.

  • March 06, 2025

    Feds Say 11th Circ. Should Affirm Value Of Ex-Braves' Farm

    Despite dropping a bid for civil fraud penalties this week against two former Atlanta Braves players accused of overvaluing a conservation easement donation, the federal government has told the Eleventh Circuit it still stands by a U.S. Tax Court ruling that the players' valuation of the property was "firmly planted in the realm of fantasy."

  • March 06, 2025

    Federal Workers File Mass Challenges To Firings In Admin Court

    Federal workers who lost their jobs in the Trump administration's mid-February purge of the civil service have begun challenging their terminations through class action appeals to an administrative court, seeking the reinstatement of tens of thousands of probationary employees to about 20 federal agencies.

  • March 06, 2025

    Wheeling & Appealing: The Latest Must-Know Appellate Action

    Believe it or not, there's still important litigation happening that doesn't involve President Donald Trump, and the proof exists in this month's circuit court calendars. During the remaining weeks of March, arguments will explore numerous high-profile topics, including a law firm's severe punishment for alleged misconduct in 9/11 litigation and a judicial rebuke of Trader Joe's for "an attempt to weaponize the legal system."

  • March 06, 2025

    ND High Court Nixes Greenpeace Transfer Bid In $300M Trial

    The North Dakota Supreme Court has denied Greenpeace's motion to transfer venue in an ongoing $300 million defamation trial by pipeline-builder Energy Transfer out of a district where all local judges earlier recused themselves before the case finally landed in a state judge's court.

  • March 06, 2025

    Wash. Biz Groups Say Water Regs Rule Likely To Be Repealed

    A group of business associations is fighting a bid by Washington state and a slew of Native American tribes to dismiss the associations' challenge to a decision that established water quality standards for the Evergreen State, saying the rule is set to be repealed under the new federal administration.

  • March 06, 2025

    Insurer's 9th Circ. Procedural Win Highlights Appraisal Rules

    A Ninth Circuit panel affirmed that a property owner could not litigate its insurer's failure to pay for losses before a required appraisal to resolve disagreements, highlighting the importance of appraisal provisions and how they could limit potential policyholder challenges. Here, Law360 speaks to Colin Kemp, an insurance recovery attorney for Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP, about Mount Vernon Specialty Insurance Co.'s procedural victory and its implications for coverage challenges.

  • March 06, 2025

    Fintech Startup Klarna Ready For $1B IPO, Plus More Rumors

    Fintech startup Klarna is readying a $1 billion initial public offering, Apollo Global Management is keen to lead a $35 billion funding package to help Meta build new data centers, and Italian fashion house Prada is near to closing a $1.6 billion deal to acquire luxury clothier Versace from Capri Holdings Ltd.

  • March 06, 2025

    Tribal Water Rights Bills Advance To US Senate Floor

    A slew of tribal water rights settlement bills are heading to the U.S. Senate for review, and, if approved, they will allow for the completion of multimillion-dollar infrastructure projects, sustainable management and the delivery of drinking water to several Indigenous communities.

  • March 06, 2025

    Senate Dems Press Citibank To Thaw Frozen EPA Grant Funds

    A group of Democratic U.S. senators on Thursday urged Citibank to immediately release federal funding that's been frozen as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency investigates how a climate change grant program was run.

  • March 06, 2025

    Pigment Co. Not Covered For Asbestos Suits, Court Told

    A Liberty Mutual unit doesn't owe coverage to a cosmetic pigment manufacturer in underlying suits alleging injury from exposure to asbestos-containing materials, it told a New York federal court, saying certain claims fall outside the scope of coverage because they're not based on the company's work.

  • March 06, 2025

    Trump Administration Ordered To Release Funds To States

    A Rhode Island judge on Thursday ordered the Trump administration to stop withholding funds from states, saying an executive order freezing federal grants, loans and other payments approved by Congress "fundamentally undermines" the separation of powers and is causing irreparable harm.

  • March 05, 2025

    DOGE Firings, Agency Cuts Targeted In New Sierra Club Suit

    The Sierra Club and Union of Concerned Scientists were among several groups that lobbed a new suit against Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency on Wednesday, slamming the billionaire and DOGE for the "lawless" slashing of funds and federal workers.

  • March 05, 2025

    Feds Urge Justices To Allow Nuke Waste Storage In Texas

    The federal government on Wednesday told U.S. Supreme Court justices that the Fifth Circuit wrongly inserted itself into the debate over U.S. nuclear waste policy by nixing federal approval for a temporary storage facility in Texas.

  • March 05, 2025

    Union Says DOI Mischaracterized Ariz. Solar Project Site

    A Laborers' International Union of North America local has urged an Arizona federal court to throw out the U.S. Department of the Interior's approval of a large-scale solar facility on public lands, saying the agency misstated the project site's baseline conditions.

  • March 05, 2025

    Enviro, Transit Groups Back NY In Congestion Pricing Battle

    Transit and environmental advocates have sought to join the legal fight to preserve New York City's congestion pricing, saying the Trump administration is using dubious rationale to justify terminating federal approval for the program when the decision was actually driven by political animus.

  • March 05, 2025

    Trump EPA Nominees Grilled On Climate Change Views

    President Donald Trump's pick to lead the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's air office repeatedly told Democratic senators that humans must adapt to climate change, but declined to wade into policy specifics during a nomination hearing Wednesday.

  • March 05, 2025

    Wash. Justices Won't Take Up VW's $4.7M Asbestos Loss

    The estate of a mechanic who died of mesothelioma he claimed he contracted from asbestos in Volkswagen AG's brake pads can keep a $4.7 million jury win, after the Washington state's highest court rejected the automaker's bid for review.

  • March 05, 2025

    Water Main Co. Will Pay $1M After Chemicals Killed Fish

    A sewer and water line maintenance company was sentenced to pay $1 million and will spend three years on federal probation after knowingly dumping pollutants into a Connecticut waterway, killing over 150 fish and contaminating the area, acting U.S. Attorney Marc H. Silverman has announced.

  • March 05, 2025

    Four Firms Seek Top Roles In Pa. Warehouse Fire Litigation

    Lawyers from four plaintiffs firms across the country have asked a Philadelphia judge to name them class counsel in recently filed litigation over the effects of an aircraft parts warehouse fire and also requested that the court consolidate all related lawsuits in the city.

  • March 05, 2025

    Cleanova, Micronics Combine To Create $1.3B Business

    Private equity-owned clean technology maker Cleanova on Wednesday announced plans to buy fellow private equity-owned clean technology manufacturer Micronics Engineered Filtration Group to create a company with an enterprise value of $1.3 billion, in a deal built by three law firms.

  • March 05, 2025

    Colorado's Last-Resort Insurer Partners With AI Analytics Co.

    Colorado's last-resort insurer has partnered with risk modeling company ZestyAI in an effort to improve insurance access for homeowners through the use of artificial intelligence-powered models for heightened climate risks, the company said Wednesday.

  • March 05, 2025

    UK Planning To Replace Energy Windfall Tax In 2030

    The U.K. will phase out the energy profits levy, known as the energy windfall tax, in 2030, but the government plans to replace it with a new permanent tax regime for North Sea oil and gas, according to a statement Wednesday.

  • March 04, 2025

    Agencies Have 'Ultimate' Authority Over Firings, OPM Says

    The Office of Personnel Management on Tuesday issued a revised version of its January memo directing agency heads to identify all probationary employees, adding a disclaimer that OPM "is not directing agencies to take any specific performance-based actions" and that agencies "have ultimate decision-making authority."

  • March 04, 2025

    3 Takeaways From The High Court's SF Water Permit Ruling

    The U.S. Supreme Court's Tuesday ruling siding with San Francisco to strike down parts of a federal water pollution permit demonstrated a majority of justices' reluctance to force permit holders to interpret gray areas that could get them in trouble.

Expert Analysis

  • The Math Of Cross-Examination: Less Is More, More Is Less

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    When conducting cross-examination at trial, attorneys should remember that “less is more, and more is less” — limiting both the scope of questioning and the length of each query in order to control the witness’s testimony and keep the factfinders’ attention, says Thomas Innes at the Defender Association of Philadelphia.

  • Rethinking 'No Comment' For Clients Facing Public Crises

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    “No comment” is no longer a cost-free or even a viable public communications strategy for companies in crisis, and counsel must tailor their guidance based on a variety of competing factors to help clients emerge successfully, says Robert Bowers at Moore & Van Allen.

  • Fund Names Rule FAQs Leave Some Interpretative Uncertainty

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    Although recently released FAQs clarify many specific points of the 2023 expansion to the Investment Company Act's fund names rule, important questions remain about how U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission staff will interpret other key terms when the end-of-year compliance date arrives, say attorneys at Dechert.

  • How Design Thinking Can Help Lawyers Find Purpose In Work

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    Lawyers everywhere are feeling overwhelmed amid mass government layoffs, increasing political instability and a justice system stretched to its limits — but a design-thinking framework can help attorneys navigate this uncertainty and find meaning in their work, say law professors at the University of Michigan.

  • Tools For Witness Control That Go Beyond Leading Questions

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    Though leading questions can be efficient and effective for constraining a witness’s testimony, this strategy isn’t appropriate for every trial and pretrial scenario, so techniques like headlining and looping can be deployed during direct examination, depositions and even witness interviews, says Allison Rocker at Baker McKenzie.

  • Opinion

    US Steel-Nippon Merger Should Not Have Been Blocked

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    The Biden administration's block of the U.S. Steel and Nippon Steel merger on national security grounds was unconstitutional overreach and needs to be overturned, with the harms remedied in federal court, says attorney Chuck Meyer. 

  • 10 Issues To Watch In Aerospace And Defense Contracting

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    This year, in addition to evergreen developments driven by national security priorities, disruptive new technologies and competition with rival powers, federal contractors will see significant disruptions driven by the new administration’s efforts to reduce government spending, regulation and the size of the federal workforce, say attorneys at Thompson Hine.

  • Navigating The Trump Enviro Rollback And Its Consequences

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    The Trump administration's rapid push for environmental deregulation will lead to both opportunities and challenges, requiring companies to adopt strategic approaches to a complex, unpredictable legal environment in which federal rollbacks are countered by increased enforcement by states, and risks of citizen litigation may be heightened, say attorneys at Beveridge & Diamond.

  • Series

    Competitive Weightlifting Makes Me A Better Lawyer

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    The parallels between the core principles required for competitive weightlifting and practicing law have helped me to excel in both endeavors, with each holding important lessons about discipline, dedication, drive and failure, says Damien Bielli at VF Law.

  • 8 Ways Cos. Can Prep For Termination Of Their Enviro Grants

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    The federal government appears to be reviewing energy- and infrastructure-related grants and potentially terminating grants inconsistent with the Trump administration's stated policy goals, and attorneys at DLA Piper provide eight steps that recipients of grants should consider taking in the interim.

  • Opinion

    Undoing An American Ideal Of Fairness

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    President Donald Trump’s orders attacking birthright citizenship, civil rights education, and diversity, equity and inclusion programs threaten hard-won constitutional civil rights protections and decades of efforts to undo bias in the law — undermining what Chief Justice Earl Warren called "our American ideal of fairness," says Reuben Guttman at Guttman Buschner.

  • How Trump EPA Could Fix Carbon Combustion Residuals Rule

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    The Trump administration is likely targeting the recently adopted carbon combustion residual rule, especially since it imposes very stringent, detailed and expedited requirements on coal power plants — but even if the rule is not vacated entirely, there are measures that could greatly reduce its regulatory burden, says Stephen Jones at Post & Schell.

  • Nippon Order Tests Gov't Control Over Foreign Investments

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    The U.S. government is primarily interested in restraining foreign transactions involving countries of concern, but former President Joe Biden’s January order blocking the merger of Nippon Steel and U.S. Steel shows that all foreign direct investments are under the federal government’s microscope, say attorneys at Blank Rome.

  • Opinion

    Inconsistent Injury-In-Fact Rules Hinder Federal Practice

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    A recent Third Circuit decision, contradicting a previous ruling about whether consumers of contaminated products have suffered an injury in fact, illustrates the deep confusion this U.S. Supreme Court standard creates among federal judges and practitioners, who deserve a simpler method of determining which cases have federal standing, says Eric Dwoskin at Dwoskin Wasdin.

  • How Trump Orders Roll Back Energy Efficiency Mandates

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    President Donald Trump's first-day executive orders — including a freeze on administrative rules, an order to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris Agreement, and a directive to broaden consumers' appliance choices — have shifted federal policy on energy efficiency, and bring new considerations for companies engaging with the U.S. Department of Energy, say attorneys at HWG.

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