In a move that will simultaneously send organic-agriculture supporters into the highest of sugar highs and conventional farming advocates into the deepest of sugar crashes, a federal judge halted the planting of anymore of Monsanto’s Genetically-Modified Sugarbeet seeds.

According to the AP:  

U.S. District Court Judge Jeffrey White in California issued his ruling Aug. 13 that put on hold future planting of sugar beets using genetically modified seeds. White’s ruling allows this year’s crop to be harvested and processed, but the current seed crop can’t be planted until the U.S. Department of Agriculture reviews the effect the genetically altered crops could have on other food.

Needless to say, this decision could have massive ramifications.

Monsanto’s GMO sugarbeet seeds account for about 95% of the sugarbeet seed planted in the U.S.  Domestically, farmers plant about one million acres of sugarebeets each year.  Sugarbeets are a significant source of the sugar we eat.

The effects of this decision (which you can find at 2010 WL 3222482) could have massive ramifications.  Regardless of where you fall on the debate against keeping GMO-plants out of our food supply, it’s going to be fascinating to watch this play out.

//

The Federal Register tweets.  While that is exciting for a variety of reasons, I found a recent tweet most helpful.  A few calls have come in about Public Law 111-209.  What is Public Law 111-209?  According to @Federal Register, PL 111-209 (HR 5502) amends “gift card provisions effective date.”

Pulling up PL 111-209 (also cited as 2010 HR 5502 or 124 Stat 2254) indicates that it amends the “gift card provisions effective date” of the Credit Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure Act of 2009 (CCARD for short).

While I love short public laws (and this is a short public law), I couldn’t figure out the significance of this change in effective date.   (After all, this tiny little public law garnered its own tweet.)

A little more research indicates that PL 111-209 is also popularly known as the ECO-Gift Card Act.  Prior to the passage of PL 111-209, the implementation of the gift card rules of CCARD was scheduled for August 22, 2010.  In a function of the law of unintended consequences, this August 22nd deadline would have led to the destruction of millions of plastic gift cards that would have no longer complied with the disclosure requirements CCARD.  According to one of its sponsors, the ECO-Gift Card Act will prevent 100 million of those plastic gift cards from ending up in the landfill (or ocean) prematurely.  That is the equivalent of eight football fields filled 12 feet deep with plastic cards.

PL 111-209 gives retailers until Jan. 31, 2011 (well after the Christmas shopping season) to get those *old* gift cards off of their shelves and get the new, compliant gift cards and gift certificates into place.

It’s worth noting that the ECO-Gift Card Act passed both the House and Senate unanimously.  Our legislators may not agree on a lot, but they apparently don’t care for wasted plastic.

//

Fracking.  I didn’t think it was a real word either.

It’s real and it’s worth a lot of money.

Fracking, or hydraulic fracturing, “injects a mixture of water, sand and chemicals into rock formations at high pressure to force out oil and natural gas.”  That gas is where the money comes in.  Some studies have estimated that within the U.S. there are over 16,200 trillion cubic feet of gas.  16,200 trillion cubic feet of gas is more than 150 times the amount of natural gas the world uses in one full year.  Fracking helps to recover that gas.

Some people think fracking is great.

Some people are less sure.

The reason I mention it:  fracking litigation.

I have taken a few calls in the last few months dealing with the issue of researching fracking. 

You can access complaints and answers dealing with fracking by simply searching for the fracking or fracing in Filing-all.  The media uses fracking while the industry uses fracing (or even frac’ing).  Either way, you will find over 100 filings from around the country this issue.

According to its critics, fracking can lead to contaminated waters.  Those contaminated waters may be harmful if consumed by humans.  The more people drink potentially contaminated water, one can reason, the more lawsuits will be filed.

As those lawsuits continue to be filed, you can continue to find them in Filing-All.  Keep your eye out for an increase in litigation related to fracking.

//

As the odds of a Speaker Boehner increase, supporters of a climate-change bill have turned up the heat on getting carbon-reducing legislation through the Senate.  Their efforts appear to have failed.  Already the politicos and pundits are queuing up their obits (here, here and here) for Federal Senate Bill 1733 – Senator Kerry’s Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act.

Senator Kerry urges that the bill is not dead.

Should Kerry’s bill resurrect, you can track its progress – or death by committee – on Westlaw.  Simply use our Federal Bill Tracker service (US-BILLTRK) to follow Senate Bill 1733.  It will provide you with a complete listing of the twists and turns this bill would take should the cause be championed.

Alternatively, should the GOP prevail in November, you can use the Federal Bill Tracker to see if Boehner holds true to his promise to repeal the Health Care reform legislation that, according to Boenher, “ruined the best health care system in the world.”

Grab your popcorn.

//

Here in the Land of 10,000 Lakes, I sheepishly admit that I really don’t pay much attention to the issue of water scarcity.  Last week, however, news sources gushed with a bevy of articles detailing how our need for and access to clean, potable H20 are moving in polar directions. 

For example…

• London opened its first desalination plant.
• The Hoover Dam is not longer quenching the needs of the American South West.
• Last month was the hottest June on record.  For Planet Earth.  For all of recorded history.

Should you too find yourself curious about the law that helps govern water rights in the U.S.,  try a quick search of the phrase “water rights” in the Westlaw directory.  This yields such helpful treatises as:  Law of Water Rights and Resources, Getches’s Water Law in a Nutshell, Water and Wastewater International and Laitos’ Hornbook on Natural Resources Law – among many others. 

If you would grow tired of  bad water news, cross your fingers for this rare piece of  good water news.

//

An Internet Kill switch?

No, it isn’t the cousin of the Top Kill or a sibling of Dr. Strangelove’s Doomsday Device.

It’s a proposed law working its way through Congress right now.  The skinny?  It would give the President “emergency authority to shut down private sector or government networks in the event of a cyber attack capable of causing massive damage or loss of life.” Apparently, an initial draft of the bill provided the President with authority to indefinitely keep those “networks”  under Federal control.  An amendment reduced indefinite to “120 days” with additional days approved by Congress.

You can access the bill by searching for its title – Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act – in CONG-BILLTXT.

Were the Luddites really on to something?

//

How much will the Gulf disaster cost BP?  Its quarterly dividend?  One billion dollars?  Six billion?  Fourteen billion? 

How about everything?

Andrew Ross Sorkin writes that lawyers and investment advisors are already contemplating a potential bankruptcy for BP.  According to Sorkin, some on Wall Street are already strategizing ways to use a “pre-packaged bankruptcy” to push BP’s clean-up costs and spill-related liabilities into a separate entity.  The remaining “cleaned-up” assets would be sold to an industry-rival.

Sorkin calls this the “Texaco Scenario”.

In 1987, Texaco, saddled with a $1 billion judgment, filed Chapter 11 to escape paying this debt.  What remained was later bought by rival Penzoil.

Running a search of ti(texaco) & bankrupt!  in TP-ALL will bring you to 21 articles.  Some of the titles include, “Texaco !! – Rethinking Environmental Claims in Bankruptcy”, “Bankruptcy Filing Nixes Shipyard Worker’s Cancer Claim” and  “Treatment and Discharge of Environmental Obligations – Chapter 11 Reorganization”.

 As BP’s bills mount, so too will additional calls for more dividend suspension, additional fines and heavier penalties.  Sorkin may be spot-on in predicting what could become a phenomenally large and complex corporate bankruptcy.

//

As oil continue its heartbreaking gush into the Gulf of Mexico, so too continue the lawsuits, claims and legal maneuverings surrounding this national and natural catastrophe.  Senator Chuck Schumer indicated that he is seeking repeal of the legislation rig-owner Transocean plans to use to cap its liability for its role in the spill at $26.7 million.  Relying on the Limitation of Liability Act of 1851( starting at 46 U.S.C.A. § 30511), Transocean filed a petition with the Southern District of Texas seeking to limit its liability to the value of its interest in the destroyed oil rig itself (this is where the $26.7 million number comes from).    Interestingly enough, this same law is what the owners of the Titanic used to pay Titanic’s survivors $95,000 in damages.

You can find Transocean’s petition by going into the Southern District of Texas Filings Database (TX-SDCT-FILING) and running a search for any filing with Transocean as a party.  You will retrieve over 200 hits.  Look for the filing dated May 13, 2010.

The federal government’s response to Transocean’s petition has not yet been made available but will soon be accessible by running this same search and looking for documents dated June 1, 2010.

I imagine that one thing all parties agree on is that the oil needs to stop now and the clean-up/mitigation efforts must proceed with all earnestness.  Our thoughts are with the families and communities grappling with this tragedy.

**the figure of 21 million gallons used in the title was taken from PBS’s Gulf Oil Spill Tracker on June 3, 2010 at 5:40pm CST.

//

Think all the big dollar business deals are confined to the high-rise towers of New York or the board rooms of Silicon Valley?  Meet Gold Missy.

 I’ve handled a few calls where associates have been asked to write service contracts, business leases or purchase agreements that all deal with  transactions of a more bucolic nature.  FormFinder is a phenomenal resource for the attorney working on a high-dollar agricultural transaction.  For example, a search in FormFinder for dairy /4 lease will bring up a four different dairy farm leases and another lease specific to the renting a dairy cow.  (I wonder how American contract law would have evolved and Rose the Second of Aberlone would have fared had Sherwood and Walker had access to Formfinder.)

A  search of orchard /4 lease brings up 9 different lease or lease addendums for use in negotiating a commercial lease of any kind of fruit orchard.  Forms can be found for using livestock or still-growing crops as loan security.   Agriculture specific forms exist for incorporating the family farm.   You can also find a form memorializing the lease of a tractor (which could be useful for your client when the starting price of the 8295RT tractor is $240,954.00).

So remember, when you get that call from the entrepreneur ready to move into the world of agricultural commodity production,  you know where the resources exist to begin the process of putting things into writing.

//

This weekend was the Walleye and Pike season opener in Minnesota.  For the fishers out there, it was a glorious weekend to be out on the pristine waters of L’Etoile du Nord.    

This season’s opener, however, may have more on the line than a few fish.  Several members of the Leech Lake Chippewa band began fishing 24 hours before the scheduled opener.  Their early fishing was intended as an act of civil disobedience, meant to assert rights preserved for the Chippewa in an 1855 treaty between the Chippewa and the United States.  Some Chippewa members argue the treaty permits them access to state lakes for hunting and fishing.

Eventually, the fishing nets set out early by the Chippewa members were cut and removed from the water by state officials.  Should the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources issue citations to the early fishers?  State and federal courts may be called upon to interpret and apply a treaty that is older than the state of Minnesota itself. 

A legal dispute of this sort would not be the first instance of Minnesota finding itself in court against the Chippewa.  One case even went to the U.S. Supreme Court and resulted in the 1999 decision of Minnesota v. Mille Lacs Band of Chippewa Indians (119 SCT 1187).

Fortunately, a large amount of legal information is available to assist in navigating Tribal Law, Native American treaties and the court decisions that interpret how those treaties are to be applied.

Through the Westlaw Directory, you can access our collection of Tribal Materials.  Here you will find opinions issued by a variety of tribal courts (Cherokee, Navajo, Hopi, etc.).  You can also access the statutes, codes and governing documents for many of these same nations. 

Treaties between various Native American nations and the United States can be found in Federal Native American Treaties (FNAM-TREATIES).  Coverage of these treaties dates from 1797.

Federal court cases discussing Native American legal issues can be found in Federal Native American Law – Cases (FNAM-CS).  Finally, West Topical Highlights – Native American Law (WTH-NAM) will take you directly to reports that briefly summarize the most recent developments in Native American Law.

Additional resources, of course, exist.  Hopefully though, the above mentioned materials will provide you with a sufficient starting point should you find yourself researching similar topics.  And as always, please don’t hesitate to call the Reference Attorneys for additional assistance!