23 results for 'cat:"Environment" AND cat:"Discovery"'.
J. Morgan denies a petition by operators of a parish landfill to dismiss its neighbors’ discovery requests for pollution concentration reports and documents on toxic chemicals for its environmental contamination suit. The documents requested by litigants constitute fact work product, which contain no “mental impressions, conclusions, opinions or legal theories of an attorney.” Litigants also have demonstrated need and exceptional circumstances that prevent them from obtaining the same information by other means.
Court: USDC Eastern District of Louisiana , Judge: Morgan, Filed On: April 8, 2024, Case #: 2:18cv7889, NOS: Torts to Land - Real Property, Categories: Civil Procedure, environment, discovery
J. Hummel orders an environmental protection group focused on protecting the Hudson River to produce documents that it claimed was protected information on the basis of attorney-client privilege, attorney work product and material prepared in anticipation of litigation. The group is suing a recycling center for violating the Clean Water Act. The documentation involves communications between the group and a non-party individual, who the court finds was neither an employee of the group’s counsel nor its own in-house counsel.
Court: USDC Northern District of New York, Judge: Hummel, Filed On: March 11, 2024, Case #: 1:20cv1025, NOS: Environmental Matters - Other Suits, Categories: environment, discovery
J. Morgan grants a discovery request by suburban New Orleans area residents suing landfill operators for foul odors emitted from 2017 to 2019. The landfill owners are ordered to turn over documents they had declared protected from disclosure by the attorney work product doctrine. Following a private review of the requested records, 22 withheld invoices and certain documents contain no “mental impressions, conclusions, opinions or legal theories of an attorney.”
Court: USDC Eastern District of Louisiana , Judge: Morgan, Filed On: March 6, 2024, Case #: 2:18cv7889, NOS: Torts to Land - Real Property, Categories: Civil Procedure, environment, discovery
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J. Currault grants, in part, a motion to compel filed by a Texas oil and gas pipeline company, ordering the lessee of 27 oyster beds in Louisiana to produce financial records for its eminent domain suit. The pipeline company, an affiliate of the leaseholder, seeks to condemn the lessee’s rights to oyster beds in a 69-acre area of coastal Louisiana in order to build pipeline facilities. The oyster leaseholder's historical financial information is relevant and proportional to the needs of the case.
Court: USDC Eastern District of Louisiana , Judge: Currault, Filed On: January 3, 2024, Case #: 2:22cv5291, NOS: Land Condemnation - Real Property, Categories: Energy, environment, discovery
J. Peterson denies the city's motion to exclude the "tribal scenario" portion of the Monsanto's expert's opinion in the city's complaint accusing the agrochemical company of manufacturing polychlorinated biphenyls that contaminated the Lower Duwamish River. The city does not sufficiently argue how the tribal scenario's use of specific data from a 2000 fish consumption survey of the Suquamish Indian Tribe of the Port Madison Indian Reservation in the Puget Sound Region, rather than data from the entire Puget Sound Region, makes it irrelevant to this lawsuit.
Court: USDC Western District of Washington, Judge: Peterson, Filed On: December 1, 2023, Case #: 2:16cv107, NOS: Torts to Land - Real Property, Categories: environment, Experts, discovery
J. Joseph grants a request for a discovery order by multiple corporations being sued by 259 litigants for personal injuries and property damages, arising from toxic leaks at a now-closed pipe valve manufacturing facility in central Louisiana. Entry of a so-called “Lone Pine Order,” a discovery tool requiring litigants to meet an evidentiary threshold, will simplify complex issues, streamline costs, and help prepare for a consolidated, “Phase I” trial on common facts set for May 2024. District courts in the Fifth Circuit routinely enter Lone Pine orders in mass tort cases to facilitate case management and provide structure to the discovery process.
Court: USDC Western District of Louisiana , Judge: Joseph, Filed On: October 10, 2023, Case #: 1:20cv1346, NOS: Torts to Land - Real Property, Categories: environment, Damages, discovery
J. Lie grants the county’s petition for a writ of mandate directing the trial court to modify its discovery order in the underlying land use dispute involving allegations that the county tried to bury a report that a potential chemical release at a plant adjacent to a project site presented a risk to the public. A legal education nonprofit’s attempt to use the Civil Discovery Act as a shortcut to enforce the Public Records Act is not permissible, and the portion of the order compelling compliance with the Public Records Act by way of the Civil Discovery Act is reversed because of the potential for abuse in the breadth of pretrial discovery. “Writ review is appropriate in discovery matters where ... it is necessary to address ‘questions of first impression that are of general importance to ... courts ... and where ... guidelines can be laid down for future cases.’”
Court: California Courts Of Appeal, Judge: Lie, Filed On: October 10, 2023, Case #: H050285, Categories: environment, Agency, discovery
J. Talwani denies members of the commercial fishing industry's motion to strike documents from, and supplement, the administrative record. They fail to identify the corrections to the document to which they take issue, or to explain why those corrections were errors.
Court: USDC Massachusetts, Judge: Talwani, Filed On: September 25, 2023, Case #: 1:22cv11172, NOS: Environmental Matters - Other Suits, Categories: environment, Maritime, discovery
J. Peterson denies Monsanto's motion to exclude the expert testimony of Dr. Lisa Rodenburg from the city's lawsuit alleging that polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) from the company's product, Aroclor, contaminated the Lower Duwamish River. Monsanto claims that Dr. Rodenburg's methodology was rigged "to ensure environmental sampling data would resemble Aroclor rather than byproduct PCB sources," but her academic remarks that several locations across the United States contained PCB congeners that can contribute to water pollution do not undermine her opinion that Aroclor is the primary source of PCB contamination in the river.
Court: USDC Western District of Washington, Judge: Peterson, Filed On: September 13, 2023, Case #: 2:16cv107, NOS: Torts to Land - Real Property, Categories: environment, Experts, discovery
J. Farrish grants, in part, the environmental group's motion to compel, ruling redactions made by Shell to various discovery documents were unwarranted and prevent the group from understanding key issues in the case. Therefore, the environmentalists will be allowed to request unredacted versions of up to 50 documents provided in response to their initial interrogatories.
Court: USDC Connecticut, Judge: Farrish, Filed On: August 22, 2023, Case #: 3:21cv933, NOS: Environmental Matters - Other Suits, Categories: environment, discovery
J. Peterson denies the city's motion to prevent Monsanto's experts from testifying on the identified opinions in their reports sans their opinions about landfills as a source of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in litigation alleging that Monsanto and others intentionally manufactured and distributed PCBs that contaminated the Lower Duwamish Waterway (LDW) and the city's stormwater and drainage systems. The experts' remaining identified testimony is relevant to the case. Unlike the opinions about the landfills, the remaining testimony can address the city's public nuisance claim, as the experts opine on how the city or other parties could have contributed to the LDW's contamination.
Court: USDC Western District of Washington, Judge: Peterson, Filed On: August 18, 2023, Case #: 2:16cv107, NOS: Torts to Land - Real Property, Categories: environment, Experts, discovery
J. Deavers denies, in part, the landfill owner's motion to compel discovery, ruling that Goodyear's claim it has no documents about previous cleanup cost recovery from insurers prevents an order from the court, which cannot force the company to produce documents it claims do not exist. However, because the settlement documents between Goodyear and previous landfill owners will provide relevant information about fair and reasonable contributions to cleanup costs, the owner's motion to compel those documents is granted and Goodyear must provide any available information about settlements with other parties responsible for potential contamination.
Court: USDC Southern District of Ohio, Judge: Deavers, Filed On: August 11, 2023, Case #: 2:20cv6347, NOS: Environmental Matters - Other Suits, Categories: environment, discovery
J. Currault denies a request for a stay of all discovery submitted by the foreign owners of a tanker under investigation by the U.S. Coast Guard for environmental crimes. A stay of discovery is not appropriate in the case, and accordingly, discovery will proceed expeditiously. The government has established “peculiar” circumstances justifying holding the depositions outside of the home countries of the ship owner and the shipping company.
Court: USDC Eastern District of Louisiana , Judge: Currault, Filed On: August 11, 2023, Case #: 2:23cv2305, NOS: Other Contract - Contract, Categories: environment, Maritime, discovery
J. Jacobs finds that the district court improperly dismissed a "citizen suit" contending that years of toxic byproduct disposal by three big chemical companies elevated radiation levels on private land near their plants. The court prematurely concluded the waste did not constitute discarded material subject to environment rules but material that had been recycled into other uses, such as gravel, an issue that merits discovery as against Union Carbide and Occidental Chemical; liability is tenuous, however, as against Bayer CropScience.
Court: 2nd Circuit, Judge: Jacobs, Filed On: July 13, 2023, Case #: 21-1354, Categories: environment, Negligence, discovery
J. Fallon grants requests by oil and gas corporations and pipeline companies, dismissing claims by 30 lease holders of oyster beds alleging that they introduced “brine,” “produced water” and other pollutants in coastal waters off southeast Louisiana resulting in “significant oyster mortality.” The litigants have “not produced any specific allegations as to any event or action” by any of the energy companies that could result in their being held responsible for damage to the oyster beds. The ruling adapts a magistrate judge’s report that concluded the leaseholders’ pollution claims rely on “plain speculation” that an upward spike in damaging salinity must have been caused by energy activities “without specifying anything more.”
Court: USDC Eastern District of Louisiana , Judge: Fallon, Filed On: June 28, 2023, Case #: 2:22cv1345, NOS: Other Personal Property Damage - Torts - Personal Property, Categories: Energy, environment, discovery
J. Weisman partially grants a number of agriculture and chemical companies’ motion to compel discovery from Illinois state agencies, as part of the underlying case over the companies’ manufacture, marketing and distribution of toxic polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in the state. In line with the motion, the court compels the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency, the Illinois Department of Natural Resources, the Illinois Department of Public Health and the Illinois Department of Agriculture to answer the companies’ Rule 34 discovery requests.
Court: USDC Northern District of Illinois, Judge: Weisman, Filed On: June 20, 2023, Case #: 1:22cv5339, NOS: Property Damage Product Liability - Torts - Personal Property, Categories: environment, Product Liability, discovery
J. Morgan grants requests by neighbors of a parish landfill for disclosure of the private operators’ redacted information about other dumps they operated. The litigants say the landfill operator’s financial and operational information will provide them with evidence of the companies’ knowledge of environmental risks associated with accepting certain types of waste. The landfill operators unsuccessfully argued disclosure of their financial information and operations at other dump sites would have the unfair effect of “inflaming” the jury. The neighbors’ request for the information is proper.
Court: USDC Eastern District of Louisiana , Judge: Morga, Filed On: May 26, 2023, Case #: 2:18cv7889, NOS: Torts to Land - Real Property, Categories: environment, Damages, discovery