We’ve been tracking mountingopposition to E15 ethanol for some time now, and when the EPA approved the 15-percent corn juice blend for vehicles made in 2007 or later, we saw the opposition begin to crystalize. Now, the Detroit News reports that a number of oil, food and other interest groups have filed suit in a D.C. Circuit appeals court, seeking to halt the EPA’s approval of E15. According to the DetN
The petitioners argue that under the Clean Air Act, the EPA administrator may only grant a waiver for a new fuel additive if it “will not cause or contribute to a failure of any emission control device or system.”
They believe the “EPA has unlawfully interpreted the statute to achieve a particular outcome,” but EPA administrator Lisa Jackson said it was based on “sound science.”
Considering the approval was apparently based on study results from a mere 14 vehicles, it sounds like the industry groups might have a solid point here. Especially when you realize that a major motivation for E15 approval is from the fact that blenders couldn’t sell enough E10 to meet government mandates. As the video above (from June of this year) proves, the political tail has wagged the scientific dog on ethanol ever since the farm lobby realized that ethanol could be the next corn syrup. With any luck, this lawsuit could just be the point at which science re-asserts itself.
A federal class action lawsuit seeks to take advantage of last month’s California Supreme Court’s red light camera decision. The high court let stand a lower court ruling that invalidated citations on the ground that the city of Santa Ana’s failed to provide the legally required warning periods before activating the automated ticketing machines (view ruling). Motorist Robert Plumleigh was forced to pay $480 on March 17, 2008 after a camera accused him of turning right at a red light at one of the sixteen intersections where the city failed to provide the required thirty-day warning period. He wants Santa Ana to refund all illegally issued tickets. US District Court Judge Cormac J. Carney on Wednesday gave Plumleigh’s lawyers an extra thirty days to file for class certification.
It is one thing to recognize the legendary status of Mr. Shelby and the original Cobras, including the 427 S/C, and quite another to assert that purchasers and potential
purchasers view Cobra continuations or replicas, sold primarily as kits, which employ the Cobra 427 S/C Design as coming from a single source. The fact that Cobra replicas, sold primarily as kits, which employ the 427 S/C Design, have been sold by numerous third parties for more than three decades, including between 2002 and 2009, precludes us from drawing that conclusion. Accordingly, we find applicant’s evidence based on media coverage of Mr. Shelby and all of the Cobras not probative of the issue of acquired distinctiveness.
That’s right, the Shelby Cobra has been officially copied to death, according to a recent ruling by the US Patent Office’s Trademark Trial and Appeal Board [in PDF here]. The board’s finding was complex, as proving “distinctiveness” takes a lot of doing, but the upshot is that so many Cobra replicas have been built, consumers don’t actually think of the original (Shelby-designed) Cobras when they see one. Had Shelby sued every single kit car maker since day one, he’d have the legal rights to his design, but in the years since 1968, the term “Cobra” has come to mean more than the specific Shelby Cobra 289 or Shelby Cobra 427 S/C. In fact, a survey used to try to prove the distinctiveness of the Shelby designs in the eyes of consumers may have even used a photo of a 289 to illustrate a 427 S/C… even the guy running the survey wasn’t sure. The moral of Caroll Shelby’s legal battle to own the rights to anything resembling an original Cobra: never stop suing the kit car makers. Or, just be happy with the millions of dollars and legend status you’ve already accumulated.
Nearly three out of every four Anaheim, California residents voted Tuesday to ban the use of red light cameras in the city. Twenty-five miles away in Gardena, the police chief warned the city council in February that the devices lack public support. Gardena began using automated ticketing machines five years previously. As the contract came up for renewal, city councilmen asked during a Finance Committee meeting for the police chief to report on the public perception of the camera program. Chief Edward Medrano’s assessment was brutally honest and did not tend to support the notion that the program was put in place to reduce accidents.
The public rejected the use of photo enforcement in five more municipal referendum elections Tuesday. America’s fourth-largest city, Houston, Texas, was home to the most hotly contested vote. The group Citizens Against Red Light Cameras, run by brothers Paul and Randy Kubosh, gathered enough signatures to force the issue onto the ballot against the wishes of the city council and in spite of a legal attack from camera operator American Traffic Solutions (ATS).
A lawsuit against Mazda is moving to the United States Supreme Court, reports Bloomberg, challenging whether automakers should have been required to install shoulder belts in all of its seats prior to current regulations requiring the improved belting systems took effect in 2007. The case centers on a 2002 accident in which Than Williams was killed when a Jeep Wrangler hit her family’s 1993 Mazda MPV. The Williams MPV had only lap belts because shoulder belts weren’t required by federal law until 2007. A California court has already barred the lawsuit from coming forward, arguing that federal regulations supersede any local rulings, and that then-legal seatbelts should protect manufacturers from personal injury liability. However a recent case casts some doubt on the precedents in the Mazda case…
The city of Houston, Texas sought to keep secret all detailed information about the performance of its red light camera program on the eve of an election that will decide their fate. Yesterday, Paul Kubosh, co-founder of Citizens Against Red Light Cameras, filed suit in Harris County District Court seeking a court order compelling the release of accident data at intersections equipped with automated ticketing machines. Voters head to the polls today to decide whether or not the city will be allowed to continue using the devices.
A federal magistrate on October 20 set the schedule for a five-day jury trial to decide whether red light camera vendor Redflex Traffic Systems owes the city of Minneapolis, Minnesota $3 million. US Magistrate Judge Susan Richard Nelson set a February 1, 2012 date for the showdown with motions and pleadings to be served by February 1, 2011.
The city is furious that it had to refund $2.6 million in red light camera tickets after the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled the program was illegal (view decision). The city wants to extract that money back from the Australian ticketing firm, but Redflex is fighting the suit.
Bloomberg reports that a lawsuit accuses Toyota of a widespread coverup of unintended acceleration in its vehicles. The suit alleges that
“Toyota technicians” confirmed that vehicles were unexpectedly accelerating and the company bought back the vehicles, had customers sign confidentiality agreements and didn’t disclose the problems to regulators… In testimony about acceleration defects before Congress, Toyota Motor Corp. didn’t disclose that the technicians had replicated instances of sudden unintended acceleration not caused by pedals or mats… The company also didn’t report the customer agreements to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration… Toyota ordered employees to remove names of executives from acceleration related e-mails and to stop using specific acceleration terms in e-mails to prevent damage to the company in litigation
Toyota’s response:
Steven Curtis, a spokesman for Toyota’s U.S. sales arm in Torrance, California, said today in an e-mail that no technicians for the company or field specialists confirmed unintended acceleration in vehicles. He said the plaintiffs’ lawyers are referring to service technicians employed by dealerships, which are independent businesses… the claims are based on anecdotes and fail to identify any specific defects in the vehicles.
Plaintiffs claim that dealer techs are “agents of the company” and that vehicle repurchases and confidentiality agreements are proof positive of a coverup. Toyota admits that it investigated and repurchased two vehicles after dealer techs found “acceleration events,” but says its factory technicians were unable to replicate any problems. If this sounds like a complicated mess of he-said-she-said, consider that this suit is just one of 300 currently pending against the world’s largest automaker. The lawyers will probably be busy with this one for decades.
Albemarle County, Virginia plans this week to install its first red light camera system, ostensibly to reduce accidents caused by red light running. County documents show that at one of the two intersection approaches selected, there has not been a single accident caused by red light running in the past three years.
The county applied to the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) earlier this year for permission to allow Redflex Traffic Systems of Australia to install and operate a pair of cameras at the intersection of US 29 and Rio Road. The east bound approach at Rio Road had no reported angle collisions caused by red light running violations between 2006 and 2009, according to county records. The other monitored approach, US 29 southbound, did have related crashes. The annual crash total for the type of accidents that the photo enforcement system might address is 1.8 per year. (Read More…)
The highest courts in California and Louisiana yesterday denied the requests of municipal officials desperate to save their photo enforcement programs. In New Orleans, the red light camera and speed camera program must shut down after the Louisiana Supreme Court unanimously rejected the city’s request to overturn the decision of Orleans Parish Civil District Court Judge Paulette R. Irons who found earlier this month that the program violated the city’s own charter.
“We are obviously disappointed in supreme court’s decision because these cameras have proven to be an important deterrent to unlawful traffic practices,” a city statement explained.
Photo enforcement cameras are temporarily disabled in Albuquerque, New Mexico after a study by the University of New Mexico failed to offer a complete justification for the program. Mayor Richard J. Berry announced that he would eliminate six of the twenty red light camera intersections where accidents increased the most. He also will stop issuing speed camera citations at intersections — although he plans to keep three vans to set up mobile photo radar traps. While the contract with Redflex Traffic Systems is expired, Berry is seeking a better deal from other photo ticketing vendors.
A class action lawsuit against fifty-nine red light camera programs in the state of California will be heard before Judge William H. Alsup in the US District Court for the Northern District of California. Attorney Bruce L. Simon, who is suing Redflex Traffic Systems and American Traffic Solutions (ATS), moved Friday that the case return to the state court system. Simon argues that the contracts of Redflex and ATS with municipalities are illegal under California law.
Morale at Redflex Traffic Systems, the Australian photo enforcement company with more contracts in the United States than any other firm, has never been lower. Yesterday, the company faced the real possibility that the state government in Victoria, Australia would sue for the recovery of $15 million in citations issued by a faulty Redflex freeway speed camera system. Although the government currently refuses to issue refunds, it issued equally stern denials before giving in to public pressure by refunding $26 million worth of tickets over a high-profile accuracy failure in 2003.
Red light camera operator American Traffic Solutions (ATS) dramatically increased spending on an effort to thwart a November 2 referendum that would outlaw the use of photo enforcement in Baytown, Texas. After losing a similar referendum vote in College Station last year, the company is not taking chances and has boosted spending on its front group, Safety Cameras for a Safer Baytown, by 125 percent over what was spent in College Station, a city of about equal size.
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