On May 19, 2017, in Bartlett v. Honeywell Int’l, Inc., (N.D.N.Y. May 19, 2017), the United States District Court for the Northern District of New York dismissed common law claims for property damages based on CERCLA preemption.  Plaintiffs alleged their property was damaged because it is adjacent to a property used to store and treat dredged sediment from the Onondaga Lake Bottom Superfund Site. The Plaintiffs asserted three causes of action: […]

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On May 31, shareholders of ExxonMobil Corp. (“Exxon”) approved a proposal that would require Exxon to publish an annual assessment of the long-term portfolio impacts of global climate change policies (the “Proposal”).  Exxon joins two other major companies, Occidental Petroleum (“Occidental”) and PPL Corp. (“PPL”), where shareholders approved similar proposals requiring additional reporting on the business impacts of climate change policies. The proposals at Exxon, Occidental, and PPL all cite […]

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  On June 1, the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Appellate District of the state of California affirmed in part and reversed in part, and remanded with directions, the appeal by the Orange County Water District (OCWD) of the Superior Court of Orange County’s judgment in favor of the defendants in the underlying case. Orange County Water District v. Alcoa Global Fasteners (2017) _ Cal.App.5th _ , 2017. Importantly, the appellate […]

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On May 22, 2017, Administrator Scott Pruitt issued a Memorandum outlining actions for prioritizing the Superfund program, reviewing the remedy selection process, and establishing a task force to provide recommendations on an expedited timeframe to restructure the Superfund cleanup process.  In his Memorandum, Administrator Pruitt indicated he has “heard that some Superfund cleanups take too long to start and too long to complete.” This is not news to the Potentially […]

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