The U.S. District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma has dismissed the Sierra Club’s Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) citizen suit, filed against several oil and gas producers seeking declaratory and injunctive relief. The District Court invoked the Burford abstention doctrine (Burford v. Sun Oil Co.) and primary jurisdiction doctrine to…
On April 4, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit decided the case of Mirabella v. Villard, et al., a civil rights case brought under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, alleging, inter alia, violations of their First Amendment rights by local officials. Although the Court of Appeals concluded that the Mirabellas adequately alleged…
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit has decided the case of North Carolina v. Alcoa Power Generating, Inc. The Court of Appeals affirmed, in a 2 to 1 ruling, the decision of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina that a relevant segment of North…
On March 23, the Colorado Court of Appeals issued a ruling reversing the trial court and the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission which had denied the petitioners’ request that the Commission, when promulgating rules affecting oil and gas production operations and activities in Colorado, be required to consider public…
In Potentially Costly Nuclear Rulemaking Proposed, NRC targets include oil & gas industry, cancer treatment providers, sterilization facilities and radiographers, Pillsbury attorney Jay Silberg discusses the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) staff’s recent recommendation that the NRC undertake a rulemaking requiring licensees to provide financial assurance (or set aside funds) to cover…
In Trump Jettisons Obama Climate Policies, President Trump signed a sweeping Executive Order initiating the rollback of the Clean Power Plan and requiring a broad regulatory review of energy and environmental regulation under a new “burden” standard, we discuss President Trump’s sweeping Executive Order initiating the rollback of the Clean Power…
UPDATE: U.S. Supreme Court asked to review feds’ prairie dog regulation On March 29, in the case of People For the Ethical Treatment of Property Owners v. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, et al., the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit issued a unanimous decision that the Endangered Species…
On March 22, in the case of Delaware Riverkeeper Network, et al., v. FERC, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia dismissed the plaintiffs’ complaint that the statutory requirement that the Federal Regulatory Energy Commission (FERC) recover its annual operating costs directly from the entities it regulates results in…
On March 21, 2017, the U.S. Supreme Court decided the case of NLRB v. SW General, Inc., dba Southwest Ambulance. This case concerns the operation and application of the Federal Vacancies Reform Act of 1998 (FVRA). Section 3345(a) of the FVRA permits three categories of Government officials to perform acting service…
Two especially interesting decisions were released last Friday by the Texas Supreme Court. In Engelman Irrigation District v. Shields Brothers, Inc., the Court affirmed the ruling of the Thirteenth Court of Appeals (sitting in Corpus Christi) that a decades-old (circa 1998) final judgment against a government entity—the Engelman Irrigation District—could…