Earlier this week, the Supreme Court ruled that federal district courts, rather than appellate courts, are the proper venue to challenge the “Waters of the United States” (“WOTUS”) Rule (discussed in a previous blog post here), an Obama-era regulation that expansively defined waters subject to Clean Water Act jurisdiction.  Following the Supreme Court decision, the Eleventh Circuit on Wednesday vacated its 2015 decision which held the opposite.  In doing so, it also remanded a challenge to the WOTUS Rule brought by a coalition of states (led by Georgia) in 2015 in the federal district court in Brunswick, Georgia.

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On January 8, the Environmental Protection Agency published its statutory civil penalties, adjusted for inflation.  83 FR 1190.  The adjustment was required by the  Federal Civil Penalties Inflation Adjustment Improvements Act of 2015, which established a formula for adjusting civil penalties annually to reflect inflation, maintain the penalties’ deterrent…

Last summer, EPA finalized the TSCA Inventory Notification (Active-Inactive) Requirements, 82 FR 4255 (Active/Inactive Rule), which we previously reported on here .  As a reminder, the Active/Inactive Rule requires manufacturers and processers to submit notifications to EPA for chemicals that have been manufactured or processed between June 21, 2006 and June 21, 2016.  The deadline for submittal of the required reports by manufacturers – February 7, 2018, is quickly approaching.

The Louisiana Department of Revenue (the “Department”) has joined the ranks of cash-strapped states looking to raise additional corporate tax revenue through scrutinizing transfer pricing and proposing adjustments.  In transfer pricing audits, the Department looks at transactions between related parties (having common ownership) and seek to determine whether the transactions are priced as they would…

Paul M. Seby, a shareholder in Greenberg Traurig’s Environmental Practice, authored the article, “WOTUS Is Caught in a Whirlpool of Litigation—Is It Coming Back Around?” published in The National Law Journal. This article examines the future of the 2015 “Waters of the United States” (WOTUS) Rule as the EPA and the Army Corps…

As the deadline imposed by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) approaches for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to determine whether to exercise its regulatory authority over the electricity market in a manner designed to throw a life line to coal and nuclear power generators, the FERC commissioners have not hesitated to publicly make known their feelings on the rule. In a recent interview with Bloomberg, Chairman Neil Chatterjee hinted that he may favor a temporary, middle-ground approach in order to meet the DOE deadline.

DOE’s proposed rulemaking addresses the assertion that the closure of coal and nuclear plants would negatively impact the reliability and resilience of the U.S. electrical grid. While Chairman Chatterjee did not provide full support for Energy Secretary Rick Perry’s subsidy-based plan to stop the decommissioning of coal and nuclear plants, the interim solution the chairman suggested in the interview offers some hope for proponents of the rule after S&P Global reported that Commissioner Robert Powelson had indicated that FERC did not “do politics” and would not “destroy the marketplace” and Commissioner Cheryl LaFleur offered support to these statements on twitter.

Trade press reports have highlighted a spate of recent recalls relating to food and drink products in the UK resulting from labelling errors. Examples include foods recalled because of salt crystals not mentioned on the packaging (which represent a potential choking hazard), chocolate drinking straws with labels not in English (with allergen information therefore not easily comprehended) and several products which contained allergens, including sulphur dioxide and/ or sulphites, not correctly mentioned on the label.

Where a product is not in compliance with food safety requirements (and may have reached the consumer) a food business operator is required by law to effectively and accurately inform the consumers of the reason for its withdrawal from sale, and when other measures are not sufficient to achieve a high level of health protection, recall from consumers products already supplied to them (under Article 19 of the EU General Food Law Regulation (178/2002)). A ‘recall’ is any measure or set of measures intended to achieve the return of unsafe food and is likely to include measures intended to trace the affected products, communications to customers, management of returns and quarantining/ disposing of any returned products.