Recently, our colleagues Michael Reese and Andrew Home posted their client alert discussing the Water Infrastructure Improvements for the Nation Act. This legislation creates new obligations as well as new opportunities for infrastructure constructors, owners/operators of public water systems and their lenders. This new legislation and related appropriations may pave the…
Last summer, in the waning stages of the Supreme Court’s 2015-2016 term, the U.S. Supreme Court issued an opinion reversing the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit’s use of Chevron deference to overrule a district court which had decided that neither the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) nor the…
OSHA has just published a Final Rule restating its interpretation of the “continuing violations” theory. There are now two Circuit Court of Appeals rulings that disagree with this interpretation: AKM LLC dba Volks Contractors v. Secretary of Labor, et al. (Volks) and Delek Refining, Limited v. Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission,…
On January 3, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit issued a ruling reversing the district court’s decision that Asarco could not proceed with its claims for cost recovery at a Utah Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) mining site. The case is Asarco, LLC v. Noranda…
Recently Law360 published my three-part series covering 2016’s most significant environmental cases decided by the U.S. Supreme Court and federal courts. Part 1 covers the U.S. Supreme Court and federal courts sitting in the D.C., First, Second, Third and Fourth Circuits. Part 2 highlighted cases decided by the federal courts sitting in…
On December 22, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia issued an opinion in Water Quality Insurance Syndicate v. U.S., which reversed the Coast Guard’s National Pollution Funds Center’s (NPFC) finding of gross negligence by the captain of the MONARCH, a supply vessel that collided with an offshore oil…
On December 21, the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) signed the Final Rule revising the EPA’s Chemical Accident Prevention regulations, generally known as the Risk Management Program (RMP). These rules were mandated by the 1990 Clean Air Act amendments that regulate emissions of hazardous air pollutants (42 U.S.C. § 7412),…
Two new statutes—the 2017 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) and the GAO Civilian Task and Delivery Order Protest Authority Act of 2016 (Civilian Task Order Act)—greatly impact the ability of government contractors to pursue bid protests of task order awards. The NDAA increases the jurisdictional threshold from $10 million to…
Today, our colleague Glenn Sweatt published a client alert discussion the Defense Innovation Unit (Experimental) (DIUx) relaunched in May 2016 and recent developments, including the award of more than $36 million in new contracts in FY 2016, and what is expected in the coming year. The alert is titled High-Tech Government…
On April 7, 2015, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, in Gulf Restoration Network, et al., v. McCarthy, vacated and remanded a decision of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana that granted, in part, the plaintiff environmental organizations’ complaint that the Environmental Protection…