Environmental Litigation News

Since late 2010, Washington, D.C. law firm Patton Boggs has been poking a sleeping tiger. It has filed three peculiar federal lawsuits—in its own name, not on behalf of any client—against Chevron, the third largest corporation in the United States. These cases have fared poorly; two were quickly dismissed, and a federal magistrate judge recommended tossing the third in March. On Friday, the tiger awoke. 

An Ontario court rejected an attempt by Ecuadorean plaintiffs to collect a multibillion-dollar environmental award from Chevron Corp. in Canada, giving the oil company a fresh victory in a legal battle that has sprawled far beyond the Amazonian jungles where it began.

New York City pension funds sued BP Plc for at least $39 million in investment losses, saying the oil company failed to disclose the risks and safety issues leading to the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.

The decision by Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood to appoint his predecessor Mike Moore and Ridgeland attorney Billy Quin as outside counsels to handle the state’s litigation against BP over the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill will draw some familiar political fire.

BP’s cement contractor on the drilling rig that exploded in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 announced Monday that it is trying to negotiate a settlement over its role in the disaster, a focus of trial testimony that ended last week.

Chevron Corp.'s aggressive push to overturn a $19 billion environmental judgment in Ecuador is beginning to convert some of its legal adversaries into allies. The energy titan is trying to undermine the case brought by residents of Ecuador, who in 2011 won a verdict there finding the company responsible for contamination of the country's oil-rich rainforests.