The BP Oil Spill case settled! Well, part of it. The smaller part. But, still, we must count this a victory for U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier, whose reported 72 million pages of assigned reading will inevitably be shaved down. (Does this man have an iPad?)

On Friday evening the court announced that BP had reached a settlement with the steering committee that represents thousands of private plaintiffs in the case. Judge Barbier postponed the trial indefinitely while the remaining parties, including the federal government, regroup. According to news reports, the settlement would cover claims for economic loss and medical harm.  BP estimated that the settlement, which has no firm cap, might total $7.8 billion; the actual number would depend on how many plaintiffs accept the deal and how much they’re ultimately paid. Plaintiffs displeased with the offer could opt out and stay in …

The toll:  An estimated 6,500 to 17,967 premature deaths, 9,867 non-fatal heart attacks, 3,947 cases of chronic bronchitis, and more than 2.3 million lost work and school days. That's just a partial tally of the costs Americans will bear because of unjustified delays in two critical health and safety regulations.  More broadly, the Administration’s Fall 2011 Regulatory Agenda—released late, at the end of January of 2012—shows how many of the most important rules currently in the regulatory pipeline are being similarly delayed, leaving people and the environment inadequately protected against a number of unreasonable risks, possibly for years to come.

Working from the latest regulatory agenda, a new CPR Issue Alert assesses the Obama Administration’s progress in completing 12 key regulatory actions identified in a CPR white paper issued last April. A group of CPR Member Scholars …

A new Pew public opinion poll published last week shows substantial public support for specific types of regulation, but skepticism about regulation in general. While 70-89% of the public would either expand or keep current levels of five specific types of regulation, 52% say government regulation of business usually does more harm than good as compared to 40% who think regulating business is necessary to protect the public interest. The five types of regulation were car safety and efficiency, environmental protection, food protection and packaging, prescription drugs, and workplace safety and health. These poll results generally echo previous polling, including an earlier poll by Pew.

It may be, as cynics are likely to point out, you can’t underestimate the power of the American people to hold two contradictory ideas at once. Perhaps, but the polling results do offer insight into how the public thinks about regulation …

a(broad) perspective

Today’s post is first in a series on a recent CPR white paper, Reclaiming Global Environmental Leadership: Why the United States Should Ratify Ten Pending Environmental Treaties.  Each month, this series will discuss one of these ten treaties. 

Agreement on the Conservation of Albatrosses and Petrels Adopted and Opened for Signature on June 19, 2001 Entered into Force on February 1, 2004 Number of Parties: 13 Signed by the United States, June 19, 2001 Sent to the Senate on September 26, 2008, and January 16, 2009

Albatrosses and petrels are oceanic birds with a unique natural history:  they typically breed on remote, barren islands and spend most of their time flying long distances over the ocean.  Some species may not return to land for many years after birth and then only briefly to reproduce.  This highly migratory natural history means that these birds …

On February 28, the Supreme Court will hear argument in Kiobel v Royal Dutch Petroleum, a case with far-reaching implications for efforts to hold corporations accountable when they commit or are complicit in abuses of human rights. 

For over fifty years, Shell has extracted oil from Nigeria, causing great harm to the environment and people of the Niger delta.  The Ogoni people living in the delta protested Shell’s operations, and in response the Nigerian government harshly oppressed them.  Most infamously, in 1995 it executed the author Ken Saro-Wiwa, together with eight other leaders of the protests.     

Esther Kiobel, the widow of one of the executed men, as well as other affected Ogoni, sued Shell in U.S. federal court, claiming that it aided and abetted the Nigerian government in its violations of human rights law.  The plaintiffs relied on the Alien Tort Statute (ATS), a law …

Well, another magnificent Mardi Gras has ended, and at this point, I’d normally be slouched on the sofa sipping a tomato juice (neat) and sorting beads. But not this year.  That’s because next week, squadrons of lawyers, journalists, petroleum engineers, and fisher folk are scheduled to descend on New Orleans, squeeze into a federal courtroom, and begin on Monday what the media have modestly called, “The Trial of the Century,” otherwise known as the BP Oil Spill litigation.

Whatever the rest of the century holds, it seems fair to say that this legal dispute, if it does not settle, will be the most complicated environmental trial anyone has ever seen.  With a thousand plaintiffs, a galaxy of witnesses, and 20,000 exhibits, this spectacular has more moving parts than a Madonna half-time show. As the trial unfolds, I’ll provide you …

Imagine for a moment that you’rethe chief executive of a company that manufactures chemicals used in plastics that become consumer products, especially plastic picnic ware.  The head of your product development lab reports that she has just gotten some troubling results regarding one of your biggest sellers—a chemical agent that makes it possible for plastic utensils to maintains their decorator colors.  The study shows that this agent causes severe neurological damage in rats.  The Toxic Substances Control Act, commonly referred to as T(O)SCA, requires you to turn all “health and safety” studies over to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).  You tell her to do so, but order that the name of the suspect substance be replaced with a so-called “generic chemical name” that makes it impossible for anyone to understand the implications of the study.  You further instruct that your company name be …

On Feb. 28 and 29, the D.C. Circuit is scheduled to hear arguments on a suite of industry-led challenges to EPA-issued greenhouse gas rules.  While attention has focused on industry’s challenge to EPA’s finding that greenhouse gases (GHGs) endanger the environment, industry’s challenge to the greenhouse gas permitting “tailoring” rule – a rule limiting the CAA’s application to only the largest GHG sources – is just as important, and just as interesting a battle.  At issue is constitutional law’s most hard-fought doctrine in environmental litigation: standing to sue. 

In its September 2011 brief, EPA contends that the Tailoring Rule is designed to alleviate the burden that the CAA would otherwise impose on a wide variety of stationary GHG sources.  Because it is alleviating, not imposing, a burden, the Tailoring Rule does not create the “injury” that industry must demonstrate to have standing to …

Cross-posted from Legal Planet.

Governor Romney has endorsed an idea called regulatory budgeting, but it really means capping protection for public health. Romney’s position paper explains the concept as follows:

To force agencies to limit the costs they are imposing on society, and to provide the certainty that businesses crave, a system of regulatory caps is required. As noted, the federal government has estimated that the existing regulatory burden approaches $1.75 trillion. We cannot afford those costs to go any higher. . . .

. . . .In the first term of a Romney administration, the rate at which agencies could impose new regulations would be capped at zero. What this means is that if an agency wishes or is required by law to issue a new regulation, it must go through a budget-like process and identify offsetting cost reductions from the existing regulatory burden.

Most of the EPA’s major …