CategoryClaims

America has grossly undercounted its opioid-dependent babies. They deserve justice

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They cry every night, and yet they are unheard — the hundreds of thousands of American babies born in this century to mothers hooked on opioids, a manmade crisis fueled by the greed of some of the nation’s biggest pharmaceutical companies. One reason that everyday Americans don’t know as much as they should about these children born into what the doctors call Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome...

Trump has a vested interest in killing clean energy

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From time to time, I’ve written here about Donald Trump’s disastrous environmental policies. That’s because the intersection between American politics and the ecology is a critical one. Indeed, the election of the Republican presidential nominee would be a game changer for the planet. Trump has spoken repeatedly on the campaign trail about his passion for bringing back the U.S...

The frightening new stat about New Orleans and global warming

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As citizens of the world, we all should be concerned — if not alarmed — about climate change and the impact it will have on our way of life. But when you are a citizen of New Orleans, as I am, the issue looms even larger. It’s no secret that my native city is on the front line of global warming; sitting below sea level and separated from the Gulf of Mexico and its ferocious...

Can our legal system stop global warming, for the sake of the children?

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As an environmental attorney, I’ve seen time and time again how the American legal system can bring justice to people — blue-collar workers, private property owners — who had no other real venue for airing their grievances. We’ve seen time and time again that large, profit-minded corporations can’t be trusted to do the right thing, and that too many of our so-called...

“Flint’s best chance for a lawsuit”: My op-ed for the Washington Post

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In recent weeks, I’ve turned some of my attention north toward the deplorable situation in Flint, Michigan, where government bungling — or worse — caused citizens, including children, to be poisoned by lead-contaminated water. It’s clear that residents there will need to fight back by any means necessary. This weekend, I was delighted that the Washington Post’s new...

The BP settlement isn’t good enough for Plaquemines Parish

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I’ve long said that no likely BP settlement would ever be enough for the damage that its 2010 oil spill caused to the Gulf region. Mostly, that’s a moral argument: The purpose of punitive damages is that a company must be shown that the cost of doing bad is more than doing good — but that’s hard to do when an oil company’s typically reckless drilling and production...

More evidence that BP got off too easily

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Last week I wrote here that BP’s $54 billion payout for damages and restoration from the 2010 Gulf oil spill just wasn’t really enough — both because of the ongoing environmental damage from the Deepwater Horizon oil that continues to wash up on our beaches and because dollars trumped real accountability. You won’t hear that critique too much from public officials, who are...

BP can never pay enough for what it’s done

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If anything has the ability to cut through the clutter in our 24/7 frenetic news cycle, it’s Wall Street. Say what you will about the capital markets, but the way that investors react to important news is a pretty good reality check. This week, there was a major development in the quest for just compensation for the 2010 BP oil spill, the ongoing crisis that sparked the creation of this...

No, BP did not make the oil in the Gulf “disappear”

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This week has been something of an upsetting one for the millions of Gulf Coast residents whose lives were turned upside down by the massive BP oil spill in 2010. Inside the federal courthouse in New Orleans, lawyers for the British oil giant have been pushing to reduce the civil penalties it will have to pay for the widespread damage under the Clean Water Act. In doing so, the firm has called a...

BP is injuring the Gulf clean-up workers all over again

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There’s a lot of things about dealing with BP regarding the Gulf oil spill and its aftermath, which has cast its pall over the region for the last four-and-a-half years, that make you want to pull your hair out. But nothing has been as agonizing as the company’s bitter treatment of thousands of clean-up workers who took to the Gulf in an effort to rescue birds and turtles, and to...

Stuart H. Smith is an attorney based in New Orleans fighting major oil companies and other polluters.
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