In Scots law, it is possible to acquire certain rights to land – access, for instance – simply by the passage of time. This process is known as “prescription” and is outlined in the Prescription and Limitation (Scotland) Act 1973. There are two forms of prescription: positive and negative. Negative prescription extinguishes certain rights after a period of time ...
The UKCS is the largest decommissioning market in the North Sea. There are around 475 fixed facilities, over 10,000 kilometres of pipeline and approximately 5,000 wells. These will all need to be decommissioned over the next 30 years, when they reach the end of their economic life, at an estimated cost of £59.7 billion ...
In Australia, we're seeing enormous opportunities and some policy challenges in renewable energy ...
Feeling the heat: the draft Climate Change Bill, 2018 Earlier this year, the South African Minister of Environmental Affairs (the “Minister”) published the draft Climate Change Bill, 2018 for public comment. Since then, the Department of Environmental Affairs (“DEA”) has undertaken a road show across the country to solicit comments to the Bill and held further bilateral meetings with stakeholders earlier this year ...
On 1 January 2020, the maximum allowable sulfur content of marine fuels will be drastically reduced from the current 3.50% to 0.5% m/m. 2020 is rapidly approaching, but is the shipping industry really prepared? In this article, we provide an overview of the regulations and the main alternatives for compliance that shipowners and operators are faced with. Introduction On 1 January 2020, the maximum allowable sulfur content of marine fuels will be drastically reduced from the current 3.50% to 0 ...
Not-for-profit Reforesting Scotland’s "Thousand Huts" campaign has spearheaded the regrowth of the hutting community, previously almost entirely eradicated by increasingly strict building regulations. The new Building (Miscellaneous Amendments) (Scotland) Regulations 2017 sets out the framework for ecologically sustainable hut development. What is a Hut? A hut must be a single storey building used as recreational accommodation ...
The California Court of Appeal recently upheld a lower court decision that, as we previously discussed, expanded the scope of the "public trust doctrine" to include groundwater. In Environmental Law Foundation v. State Water Resources Control Board, the appellate court held that agencies permitting groundwater pumping must consider how pumping may harm "public trust interests ...
Months into the United States’ trade dispute with China, and there is no end in sight to the dispute. There are three significant deadlines for U.S. importers to consider involving the tariffs the U.S ...
Lawyers are often criticised for using overly complex legal and technical wording in contracts. The purpose of a contract is, amongst other things, to clearly set out the rights and obligations of the contracting parties, and to limit uncertainty during the particular project. To this end, it is important to use plain English in contract drafting and as a general rule, to use short sentences, defined terms and a clear and logical structure ...
Earlier this year, in Kim v. Toyota Motor Corp., the California Supreme Court delivered a significant win to product manufacturers concerning the admissibility of industry custom and practice evidence in a strict product liability design defect action. Haynes and Boone, LLP Partner M.C ...
As a business owner in the Pacific Northwest, you likely have heard of the changes to California’s regulations regarding warning labels on consumer products, Proposition 65, which takes effect August 30, 2018. Your business may be affected by the changes if your business conducts any consumer product-related business in California ...
The Industrial Court is a creature of statute. In determining a particular dispute, the Industrial Court must act in accordance with the purposes and express provisions of the Industrial Relations Act 1967 (“Act”). The Court must also act according to “equity, good conscience and the substantial merits of the case without regard to technicalities and legal form” [1] ...
In North Midland Building Ltd v Cyden Homes Ltd, the Court of Appeal held that an express contractual term allowing an employer to levy liquidated damages for periods of concurrent delay took precedence over a common law principle known as the prevention principle. Background Cyden Homes Limited (CH) employed a contractor, North Midland Building Limited (NMB), to design and build a large house in the Midlands, under a JCT Design and Build construction contract ...
In the Loop: With the Hanson Bridgett Government Group Not long ago, the state of California suffered through a crippling six-year drought, and water conservation was the name of the game. But California’s last two winters have been wetter, and water conservation feels a lot less urgent when the stuff is literally falling from the sky ...
As the Trump administration is pushing forward on its deregulatory agenda and, in particular, its efforts to improve the Endangered Species Act (ESA) and its implementation by the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) and National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) (together, the Services), the Supreme Court is poised to hear a landmark case on designation of critical habitat under the ESA that could provide some guideposts for the Services’ new regulations ...
Proposition 65 is a 1986 California right-to-know law requiring businesses to provide “clear and reasonable” warnings of potentially harmful exposures to chemicals appearing on the growing list maintained by California’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (“OEHHA”) ...
The Corps Struggles to Balance Competing Constitutional and Statutory Duties Federal agencies must often balance competing policy concerns and legal requirements. This process may be difficult and fraught with intense public feedback, and frequently results in litigation. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (the Corps) has found itself in the hot seat over how it manages the nation’s rivers, pitting its obligations under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) against private property rights ...
The first upscale exploration of oil and gas in Montenegro started in 1914, when King Nikola Petrovic approved the National Assembly's decision for oil exploration around Lake Skadar. The first well in the area of Crmnica dates back to 1922 - although it produced nothing of significance. In later researches of the Montenegrin offshore, the existence of geological structures with the potential for hiding hydrocarbon deposits was confirmed ...
Getting the Deal Through – Shipbuilding is part of the series of Getting the Deal Through law guides published by Law Business Research that provide an overview of specialist areas of the law in a variety of international jurisdictions. It is published annually and the seventh edition, covers 13 jurisdictions. Leading practitioners from each jurisdiction answer the same key questions ...
It was this time last year that U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt created a Superfund Task Force to “provide recommendations . . ...
With Administrator Scott Pruitt at its helm, cooperative federalism is the frequently recited principle underlying recent EPA enforcement efforts. As the Environmental Protection Agency’s regulatory oversight in areas like the Clean Water Act is delegated to the states, the agency is relying more upon state and local authorities to enforce the laws. There are shortcomings associated with this approach, which were raised in the recent U.S ...
The Administrative provisions that set forth the guidelines for comprehensive management of waste requiring special management in the hydrocarbons sector (the “Guidelines”) were published in Mexico’s Federal Official Gazette on May 2, 2018 and became effective the following day ...
