Latest Breaking News

Supreme Court undermines $745M verdict against Chevron in Louisiana over coastal damage


Work barges build a breakwater along the northeastern coast of Lake Pontchartrain in Tangipahoa Parish in an undated photograph. Constructed as part of a $13.5 million project through the Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority and parish government, rock walls are designed to break up wave action and capture sediment to protect the swamp shoreline of the critical Manchac land bridge separating Lakes Pontchartrain and Maurepas. Photo provided by Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority

BY MARK BALLARD | Staff writer
30 mins ago

WASHINGTON – A unanimous U.S. Supreme Court undermined Friday a huge jury verdict from Plaquemines Parish and more than 40 lawsuits filed by local, parish and state governments seeking recompense from the oil companies they claim tore up Louisiana’s coastal marshes in the search for fossil fuels.

The 8-0 decision written by Justice Clarence Thomas in Chevron USA Inc. v. Plaquemines Parish is a narrow ruling on a technical legal issue. It essentially requires federal courts, rather than state district courts, to decide claims that companies should pay for alleged pollution and hastened erosion along the coastline. ... Justice Samuel Alito, the ninth member of the high court, didn’t participate because he owned stock in one of the energy companies.

Thomas and the justices found that lower federal courts and the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals were incorrect in their readings of the federal removal law. The case was returned to the 5th Circuit. ... The justices didn’t look directly at a $745 million state district court jury verdict in Plaquemines Parish against Chevron USA. But the high court’s new definitions for the federal removal law likely would require the case to be retried in federal district court.

More broadly, the court’s interpretation impacts litigation across the nation arising against private companies contracted with the federal government should be shielded from local bias for damage caused in local communities.

{snip}