{"id":23572,"date":"2017-04-14T12:55:03","date_gmt":"2017-04-14T17:55:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=23572"},"modified":"2017-04-14T12:55:03","modified_gmt":"2017-04-14T17:55:03","slug":"how-a-judge-scrapped-pennsylvania-families-4-24m-water-pollution-verdict-in-gas-drilling-lawsuit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=23572","title":{"rendered":"How a Judge Scrapped Pennsylvania Families’ $4.24M Water Pollution Verdict in Gas Drilling Lawsuit"},"content":{"rendered":"

How a Judge Scrapped Pennsylvania Families’ $4.24M Water Pollution Verdict in Gas Drilling Lawsuit<\/a><\/h3>\n
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For many residents of Carter Road in Dimock, Pennsylvania<\/a>, it’s been nearly a decade since their lives were turned upside down by the arrival of Cabot Oil and Gas, a\u00a0company whose Marcellus Shale hydraulic fracturing (\u201cfracking\u201d)<\/a> wells were plagued by a series of spills and other problems<\/a> linked to the area’s contamination of drinking water\u00a0supplies.<\/p>\n

With a new federal court ruling handed down late last Friday, a judge unwound a unanimous eight-person jury which had ordered Cabot to pay a total of $4.24 million<\/a>over the contamination of two of those families’ drinking water wells. In a 58 page ruling<\/a>, Magistrate Judge Martin C. Carlson<\/a> discarded the jury’s verdict in Ely v. Cabot<\/em> and ordered a new trial, extending the legal battle over one of the highest-profile and longest-running fracking-related water contamination cases in the\u00a0country.<\/p>\n

In his order, Judge Carlson chastised the plaintiff’s lawyers for \u201crepeatedly inviting the jury to engage in unwarranted speculation\u201d and wrote that, in his personal estimation, the plaintiffs had not presented enough evidence to warrant the jury’s $4.24 million in damages. The original complaint for the case was filed in November 2009<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Nonetheless, Judge Carlson declined to throw out the lawsuit entirely, ordering Cabot to re-start settlement talks with the Ely and Hubert families. If those talks fail, the trial process will begin anew, extending the already years-long legal battle into months or even years to\u00a0come.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe judge heard the same case that the jury heard and the jury was unanimous,\u201d Nolan Scott Ely, the lead plaintiff in the case, said in a statement. \u201cHow can he take it upon himself to set aside their verdict? It’s\u00a0outrageous.\u201d<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How a Judge Scrapped Pennsylvania Families’ $4.24M Water Pollution Verdict in Gas Drilling Lawsuit For many residents of Carter Road in Dimock, Pennsylvania, it’s been nearly a decade since their lives were turned upside down by the arrival of Cabot Oil and Gas, a\u00a0company whose Marcellus Shale hydraulic fracturing (\u201cfracking\u201d) wells were plagued by a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[5317,3957,15110,15111,619,723,11167,11481,1411],"class_list":["post-23572","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-desmog-blog","tag-gas-drilling","tag-gas-industry","tag-macellus-shale","tag-pennsylvania","tag-shale-oil","tag-sharon-kelly","tag-steve-horn","tag-water-pollution"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23572","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23572"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23572\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23573,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23572\/revisions\/23573"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23572"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23572"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23572"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}