It’s the New Year and we at Taylor & Hammel LLC are kicking it off in a big way by announcing a new name and look. We hope to magnify the successes of the last decade and focus on the future of our company as Taylor Research Group (TRG).
Another Lead-Related Crisis: East Chicago, Indiana
There are, of course, some big differences. The affected West Calumet Complex in East Chicago falls within an already designated EPA Superfund site where years before companies “smelted, dealt with or processed lead for decades,” according to CNN. The EPA has since sued several of these Potentially Responsible Parties (PRPs). But attorneys will now have to determine to what extent governmental agencies share in ongoing remedial efforts.
Taylor & Hammel LLC Turns 10
We’re celebrating our tenth anniversary and what a decade it has been! It’s been fun to think about where we’ve been over the past decade and where we hope to go as well as the changes in our lives and with technology. You may have seen our social media posts as we’ve reflected on this or received postcards announcing this milestone in the mail.
More Legal Action in the Wake of Flint Water Crisis
The Role of Historical Research in Product Liability Litigation
Product liability is not necessarily an area of law many people immediately associate with the need for conducting historical research. After all, litigation over an injury involving burns from a hot cup of coffee or an exploding soda bottle doesn’t have much to do with dusty old historical documents. Or does it? What about an injury sustained while operating a piece of machinery that came with an inadequate instruction manual? Or an injury from a household product that had a misleading label? And what about the potential successor liability risks involved when acquiring a company that might have manufactured a defective product?
Implications of the Clean Power Plan on Historical Research
We’ve been closely tracking litigation related to the EPA’s proposed Clean Power Plan (CPP), which seeks to reduce carbon pollution from power plants and includes state-by-state mandates. Recently, the Supreme Court stayed the implementation of the plan until the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit completes its review.
The Ongoing Water Crisis in Flint, Michigan
Last week, citizens of Flint, Michigan filed two class-action lawsuits against Gov. Rick Snyder, Michigan Department of Health & Human Services, Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, and other government officials. These follow a declared state of emergency in Flint, a pending investigation from the U.S. attorney’s office for the Eastern District of Michigan, a declared federal emergency by President Obama, and an emergency order issued from the EPA to the state of Michigan.
Creating a Timeline of Fossil Fuel Disasters in America
As mentioned in a previous case study, much of the work we do in support of environmental law and toxic tort cases involves compiling comprehensive site histories. We work with our clients to come up with cost-efficient research strategies to answer their most pressing environmental and historical questions for litigation. Rarely do we get the chance to work outside our normal realm of legal clients and beyond the scope of a single site history, but that is exactly what happened over the past year in this unique case involving research into fossil fuel disasters in the United States for a non-legal client.
Understanding the Historical Environmental Story Behind the EPA’s Animas River Spill
It’s been over a week since the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) inadvertently released an estimated three million tons of toxic wastewater into the Animas River, which temporarily turned the river orange. The long term effects on the 126 mile-long waterway that flows south from Colorado’s San Juan Mountains to Farmington, New Mexico where it joins with the San Juan River, are yet to be discovered.
The Needle in the Haystack
Given our extensive knowledge of federal, state, and local records collections, law firms and businesses often come to us in search of historical documentation that will support their cases or tell their unique stories. But when we take on projects, we never know just how much documentation we’ll discover. Sometimes it’s a lot – enough to fill up several Bankers Boxes. Other times, it’s not so much, and only a file folder or two is required. Recently, we unearthed a handful of documents for an environmental case, though we had combed through many relevant collections at federal repositories in the Washington, D.C. area. This was a perfect example of finding the proverbial needle in the haystack, where one document (out of only the aforementioned handful) proved invaluable to our client.