lawsuit

Andrew Cuomo Sues Intel

by Ryan Young on November 13, 2009

in Deregulate to Stimulate, Economy, Legal, Regulation, Tech & Telecom

Over at the Washington Examiner‘s Opinion Zone, Wayne Crews and I explain why New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo’s antitrust lawsuit against Intel is a mistake.

Calling Intel’s business practices “bribery” and “coercion” is little more than argument by assertion. Rebates and exclusivity deals are normal competitive behavior. Not only is Intel facing increasing competition in its home turf, that small segment is hardly the extent of the relevant competitive market. Intel faces an uncertain future as consumer tastes shift to smaller products powered by non-Intel chips. Cuomo’s antitrust lawsuit does not stand up to scrutiny. It deserves to be dropped.

Antitrust policies thwart the competitive process whenever and wherever they are applied.

LibertyWeek 63: Suing the Government into Honesty

by Richard Morrison on October 5, 2009

in CEI Projects, Features, Podcast, Zeitgeist

Your host Richard Morrison welcomes guest co-host Jeremy Lott and Editorial Director Ivan Osorio for Episode 63 of the LibertyWeek podcast. We start with CEI’s FOIA fight with the U.S. Treasury, 7-Eleven’s attempt to give consumers a big gulp of government and the solution to a jobless recovery. We then move on to union pension politics, Ireland’s regrettable embrace of EU hegemony and some scantily-clad Olympic News.

Santacruz in Forbes: “Toxic Revenge”

by Gary Howard on July 21, 2009

in Environment, International, Legal

In today’s Forbes, CEI Warren Brookes Fellow Silvia Santacruz talks about the lawsuit against Chevron-Texaco in Ecuador. Read it here.

U.S. Chamber unveils NIMBY Watch Web site

by Marlo Lewis on March 23, 2009

in Energy, Global Warming, Stimulus to Nowhere

Last week, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce unveiled a NIMBY-Watch Web site called Project No Project .

With case studies from more than 30 states, Project No Project  chronicles how NIMBY (“not in my backyard”) activists “block energy projects by organizing local opposition, changing zoning laws, opposing permits, filing lawsuits, and bleeding projects dry of their financing.” Many of the projects blocked are not coal plants but alternative energy projects or infrastructure often touted as “green.”

The site invites readers to provide examples from their own locales of NIMBY efforts to block or stall energy-related projects.

Proponents of “green jobs” should be concerned as much as free-market and property-rights advocates, because ”stimulus” projects are vulnerable to the same NIMBY tactics that, for example, have immobilized the Cape Wind Project in Nantucket, Mass.

Although Project No Project does not mention it, we also know from  comments submitted by the U.S. Chamber and allied groups on EPA’s Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, that NIMBY forces will aquire powerful new litigation tools if EPA, in response to the Supreme Court’s Massachusetts v. EPA decision, establishes greenhouse gas (GHG) emission standards for new motor vehicles. (For more background, see my recent post on MasterResource.Org.)

In a nutshell, vehicular GHG emission standards will make carbon dioxide (CO2) a “regulated air pollutant” under the Clean Air Act (CAA). That, in turn, will automatically make CO2 “subject to regulation” under the Act’s Prevention of Significant Deterioration (PSD) pre-construction permitting program. 

The cutoff for regulation as a “major stationary source” under PSD is a potential to emit 250 tons per year (TPY) of a CAA-regulated air pollutant. Approximately 1.2 million previously unregulated entities (office buildings, hotels, big box stores, enclosed malls, even commercial kitchens) actually emit 250 TPY. All would be vulnerable to new regulation, monitoring, paperwork, controls, and penalties if EPA establishes GHG emission standards for new motor vehicles.

To qualify for a PSD permit, major stationary sources must comply with “best available control technology” (BACT) standards. Even part from any investments required for BACT compliance, the PSD permitting process is costly and time-consuming. In 2007, each permit on average cost $125,120 and 866 burden hours for a source to obtain. No small business could operate subject to the PSD administrative burden.

So NIMBY forces must be licking their chops at the prospect that EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson plans on April 30 to issue an “endangerment finding” for GHGs. An endangerment finding  is the prerequisite to establishing GHG emission standards for new motor vehicles and, thus, the critical first step to making CO2 a CAA-regulated “air pollutant.” 

When and if EPA regulates CO2, expect a surge of litigation demanding that EPA impose PSD and BACT requirements on developers proposing to build or renovate big box stores, strip malls, fast-food restaurants, or other projects NIMBYites deem undesirable or contrary to “smart growth.”

Bottom line: Applying PSD and BACT to CO2–the inexorable consequence of establishing vehicular GHG emission standards–will turn the CAA into a gigantic Anti-Stimulus package. Is Team Obama paying attention?

Liberal Politician’s Lawsuit Against God Dismissed

by Hans Bader on October 17, 2008 · 1 comment

in Legal

Nebraska State Senator Ernie Chambers’ lawsuit against God has been thrown out of court because God couldn’t be served papers informing him of Chambers’ suit.   The court threw out the suit by Nebraska’s most famous liberal lawmaker because of his failure to serve God with a summons. 

But law professor Ilya Somin believes a better reason for dismissing the suit would be that any lawsuit against God, who is Almighty, would be “unredressable” by earthly officials, who could not force God to do anything.  (“Redressability” is one of the elements for showing standing to sue under the Supreme Court’s 1992 decision in Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife). 

Last year, I predicted the dismissal of Chambers’ lawsuit here.  Like Somin, I argued that “Chambers’s suit fails the constitutional requirement for standing, that a harm be judicially redressible before it can be challenged in a lawsuit. It would be an exercise in futility for an earthly court to order God to do anything.”  Chambers’ lawsuit also should have failed because it was simply a “generalized grievance,” and been barred based on principles of sovereign immunity.

Chambers’ bizarre lawsuit, strange antics, and vitriolic speeches, have not kept him from being courted by liberal presidential candidates or receiving accolades from journalists, such as being called a “national treasure” by Mother Jones magazine, and being praised by reporters and liberal politicians for his “conscience,” “heart,” and “empathy.”