A magistrate judge in the federal district court for the District of Rhode Island ruled on four motions to compel discovery in Conservation Law Foundation’s (CLF’s) citizen suit seeking to hold Shell Oil Products US and certain affiliates liable for failing to prepare a bulk storage and fuel terminal in Providence for the effects of climate change. The court noted that it viewed “thorough and thoughtful” discovery rulings by the District of Connecticut in a similar lawsuit related to a New Haven facility as “relevant to the scope of discovery in the instant case.” The Rhode Island court allowed CLF to conduct a deposition of a Shell “metocean engineer” who had authored a case study regarding climate impacts on a facility in Louisiana on the Gulf of Mexico coast. The court agreed with the plaintiff that the engineer “likely possesses relevant information regarding the issue of best industry practices” and found that the defendants did not show any undue burden, and also rejected the defendants’ contention that CLF improperly sought an unretained expert opinion. The court denied CLF’s motion to compel more responsive answers to interrogatories that CLF said were relevant to their operator liability claims, and found that many of CLF’s requests for additional production of documents from non-party Shell affiliates were “overly broad and disproportionate to the needs of the case,” as were eight other document requests. The court did, however, order production of non-duplicate documents in response to some requests for documents from non-parties as well as production of documents in response to four “more narrowly tailored” requests regarding “relatively narrow subject matters.”

Citizen suit alleging that Shell Oil violated the Clean Water Act and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act by failing to prepare a bulk storage and fuel terminal in Providence, Rhode Island, for climate change impacts.

Conservation Law Foundation, Inc. v. Shell Oil Products US

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Rhode Island Federal Court Ruled on Conservation Law Foundation Discovery Requests in Adaptation Suit Against Shell Entities

Filed

United States of America

Rhode Island

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Rhode Island Federal Court Ruled on Conservation Law Foundation Discovery Requests in Adaptation Suit Against Shell Entities

Risk

Fossil fuel

Finance