“There are multiple reasons to repeal Sue and Settle but the two most important are its inherently anti-democratic character and the mockery it makes of transparency and accountability in government.”
“There are multiple reasons to repeal Sue and Settle but the two most important are its inherently anti-democratic character and the mockery it makes of transparency and accountability in government.”
This has been used by the E=GREENS for a long long time. They also use serial law suits to stop, delay and increase costs to projects from irrigation plans, highway improvements, bridge building, railroad track construction, power plants and hydro dams, one sues on the Possible existence of a Endangered Species simply by saying that someone thinks they saw one there . . court them orders a Environmental Study . . if the report finds nothing then the next one sues saying the study was not done correctly and must be expanded. This method has delayed many nuclear power plants so long that the costs tripled and then they were abandoned – they killed the nuclear power business.
The retired Past President of the Sierra club has publicly stated that the misuse of law suits to kill the Nuclear energy program was the single biggest mistake the E=GREENS made as it is the cleanest environmental safe method of power generation. Better late than never – he is now a pariah to the movement.
http://articlevprojecttorestoreliberty.com/the-basic-library.html
This will be an interesting law to write. How to prevent backroom deals but yet let normal negotiation take place would seem to be mutually exclusive. When our system of adversarial justice is circumvented by dishonesty, it can be very hard to change. If settlements are not allowed, the dockets will jam up completely and the ice age will return before anything gets done. If the EPA is made proof against lawsuits, then legitimate actions won’t be made, and they’ll be even less accountable.