Referencing Executive Orders issued by past administrations, on February 24, 2017, President Trump issued a new Executive Order: “Enforcing the Regulatory Reform Agenda.” The Executive Order establishes new procedures and timelines by which most federal administrative agencies must conduct their regulatory planning and review. Within 60 days, the heads of…
In The Texas Supreme Court Clarifies “Common Carrier” Status Criteria, Pillsbury attorneys Anthony Raven, Olivia Matsushita and Andrew White discuss the Texas Supreme Court’s recent opinion in Denbury Green Pipeline-Texas, LLC v. Texas Rice Land Partners, Ltd. Among other things, the Court provides judicial clarity on the “reasonable probability” public…
On February 14, the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts reviewed the application of the state’s “anti-SLAPP” law to challenges made against a blogged critique of Cardno Chemrisk, LLC (Chemrisk) and British Oetroleum (BP) in the case of Cardno Chemrisk, LLC v. Cherri Foytlin & Another, confirming that it protects pamphleteers/bloggers.…
On February 9, the Oregon Supreme Court affirmed the decisions of the Oregon Environmental Quality Commission (OEQC) and the Oregon Court of Appeals that Oil Re-Refining Company (ORRCO) was strictly liable for “simple” violations of the Oregon State Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) rules. The case is Oregon Re-Refining Company…
On February 13, a sharply divided U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit , by a vote of 8 to 6, rejected a petition seeking The Dusky Gopher Frog, once known as the Mississippi Gopher Frog, has an average length of about three inches and a stocky body with…
In a case argued on February 1, 2017 and decided on February 13, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit held that Maxxim Rebuild Co., LLC’s small manufacturing facility located in Sidney, Kentucky is not a “coal mine” subject to the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration’s (MSHA) jurisdiction. Following workplace safety inspections…
On January 31, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit held that, under the terms of a commercial general liability insurance policy, natural gas condensate, a valuable commercial product, once released, is a pollutant that triggers the policy’s “pollutant exclusion.” The case is Hiland Partners GP Holdings, LLC, et al.,…
On January 30, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit held that the extraterritorial effects of Indiana’s Vapor Pens and E-Liquid Act, Ind. Code §§ 7.1-7-1-1 et seq., violated the dormant Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution. In 2015 the State of Indiana en-acted the Act “to regulate the…
Today, my colleague Sheila McCafferty Harvey and I published our client alert discussing the House Rules Committee meetings this week during which the committee discussed resolutions for overturning regulations passed under the Obama Administration. The roll-back efforts could include key energy and environmental regulations, including the Bureau of Land Management’s new methane restrictions…
New directions in environmental and regulatory policy are outlined in these Executive Orders and Presidential Memorandums that have been issued in the past few days: An Executive Order, dated January 30, 2017, requiring federal executive departments and agencies, whenever they propose to add a new regulation, to delete two existing…