Environmental law

Patton Boggs ended its role in the environmental litigation Ecuadorian plaintiffs brought against Chevron, agreeing to pay $15 million to the energy firm and expressing regret for its role in the case, the New York Law Journal reports. An Ecuadorian court rendered a $9.5 billion verdict against Chevron for pollution left in the Amazon, but an American federal judge ruled that plaintiffs attorney Steven Donziger corrupted the Ecuadorian judiciary in an effort to win his case, the Law Journal further reports. Patton Boggs' role included seeking to enforce the judgment around the world.

The U.S. Supreme Court, 6-2, has upheld the Environmental Protection Agency's authority to limit interstate pollution, the Washington Post reports. Richard Lazarus, an environmental law professor, told the Post the rule allowing the EPA to regulate pollution sent into downwind states from upwind states is "one of the most significant rules ever" promulgated by the EPA.

U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan has ruled that Chevron can sue law firm Patton Boggs "for fraud, malicious prosecution and making false statements to the New York court during the titanic legal battle between the U.S. oil giant and one of Washington’s most prestigious law and lobbying firms," The Washington Post reports.

Patton Boggs was hired by Ecuadorian villagers to come up with a strategy to enforce the $18 billion judgment won by plaintiff lawyer Steven Donziger against Chevron for polluting the country's rainforest, Reuters reports. (The award was reduced in 2013 to $9.5 billion.)

Last month, Kaplan ruled Donziger used bribery, fraud and extortion to win the multibillion-dollar judgment, Reuters further reports.

U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan has ruled that Steven Donziger and his co-counsel obtaind a $9.5 billion environmental judgment in Ecuador against Chevron by "corrupt means," The Wall Street Journal reports. The judge ruled that, while Donziger started legal work in the case to improve conditions where his clients lived, his co-counsel and he "engaged in coercion, bribery, money laundering and other criminal conduct," including ghostwriting an expert report for a court-appointed expert, WSJ also reports.

The National Law Journal's Tony Mauro reports that the U.S. Supreme Court appears to be "mostly sympathetic" to the Environmental Protection Agency's climate-change regulation: "Any hope among industry advocates that the U.S. Supreme Court might ban Environmental Protection Agency regulation of greenhouse gases altogether went up in smoke, so to speak, during more than 90 minutes of spirited argument last week. For one thing, Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. and Justice Anthony Kennedy both suggested the court has some obligation not to ignore the court's 2007 precedent Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency. That decision said the EPA did have authority to regulate greenhouse gases emitted by motor vehicles. For another, even Peter Keisler, the lawyer for five sets of private challengers to EPA regulation, acknowledged during the argument Feb. 24 that the EPA's mandate extended to stationary sources under other parts of the Clean Air Act — just not the part at issue in the case being argued."

SCOTUSBlog's Lyle Denniston reports that a majority of the U.S. Supreme Court appears to favor the Environmental Protection Agency's position in favor of climate-change regulation in the six cases the court heard today: "As is so often the case when the Court is closely divided, the vote of Justice Anthony M. Kennedy loomed as the critical one, and that vote seemed inclined toward the EPA, though with some doubt.   Although he seemed troubled that Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli, Jr., could call up no prior ruling to support the policy choice the EPA had made on greenhouse gases by industrial plants, Kennedy left the impression that it might not matter."

The EPA's opponents argue that the agency has stretched the Clean Air Act out of shape, Denniston reports.

One of the issues taken up by the court is whether the EPA "'permissibly determined that its regulation of greenhouse gas emissions from new motor vehicles triggered permitting requirements under the Clean Air Act for stationary sources that emit greenhouses gases.'” 

The New York Times' Adam Liptak writes that the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments Monday on the ability for President Obama's administration to take executive-only action on climate change. The justices will decide if the executive branch went too far in regulating greenhouse gas emissions from stationary sources like power plants. The issue taken up by the court, Liptak reports, is whether the Environmental Protection Agency "'permissibly determined that its regulation of greenhouse gas emissions from new motor vehicles triggered permitting requirements under the Clean Air Act for stationary sources that emit greenhouses gases.'” 

The Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity & Ecosystem Services, which was established in "April 2012 with a mandate to assess the state of the world’s biodiversity and ecosystems," is going to intergrate the knowledge of indigenous peoples into eco-policy, according to a Thomson Reuters Foundation report. Unlike other international fora, including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, do not engage indigenous communities in order to shape their work, the foundation report also says.

Grist, an online environmental magazine, speculates whether the 90 companies that have been identified as causing two-thirds of human-driven global warming emissions could be sued under tort law. Environmental law experts told Grist that such lawsuits would fail in federal court. The U.S. Supreme Court found in American Elecctric Power v. Connecticut that states can't sue companies for emitting greenhouse gases. Only the Environmental Protection Agency can regulate interstate CO2 pollution because the federal Clean Air Act displaces federal common law, Grist reports. State lawsuits wouldn't be pre-empted, but it would require proving specific causation, Grist reports: "Let’s say your house was damaged by a hurricane. You would have to convince a judge and jury that the specific hurricane was caused by climate change. Just because climate change makes storms stronger and more frequent doesn’t mean you can blame oil companies for any given storm in a court of law."

The Hill reports on the oral arguments held in the U.S. Supreme Court Tuesday on the authority for the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate pollution that crosses state lines. The case could be tied because Justice Samuel Alito Jr. recused himself, leaving four justices each from "the bench's liberal and conservative wings," The Hill also reports. 

At issue is a rule by the EPA requiring 28 states to cut back on their coal-fired power plants that "'contribute significantly'" to the air problems in other states, The Hill also reports.