RENO, Nev. (AP) — A federal appeals court on Tuesday ruled against Nevada in a battle with the U.S. government over its secret shipment of weapons-grade plutonium to a site near Las Vegas but the state’s attorney general says the fight isn’t over yet.
A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals denied the state’s appeal after a judge refused to block any future shipments to Nevada. The court in San Francisco said the matter is moot because the Energy Department already sent the radioactive material and has promised that no more will be hauled there.
“The remedy Nevada sought — stopping the government from shipping plutonium from South Carolina to Nevada under the proposed action — is no longer available,” the court wrote.
Nevada also wanted the court to order the government to remove the plutonium it shipped last year but didn’t reveal had arrived there until January.
The 9th Circuit said that issue also is moot because the state failed to include that request in its original motion seeking to block future shipments.
“Because the government completed the shipment, any harm caused by the shipment cannot be ‘undone’ by granting the motion Nevada actually filed,” the ruling said.
Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford said late Tuesday he’ll continue to press the state’s case in court but didn’t provide any immediate details of its next legal move.
“The Department of Energy’s deceitful behavior in handling these shipments demonstrates my office’s need to continue aggressively litigating to hold the Department of Energy to its promises,” Ford said in a statement.
“The health and safety of all Nevadans is of paramount importance to my office, and our dedicated team will continue to pursue all options for ensuring that no further unlawful plutonium shipments reach this state,” he said.
Among other options, Nevada could now request a hearing before the full 9th Circuit or seek a new court order to remove the plutonium that’s already been shipped.
The Energy Department didn’t respond to repeated requests for comment on Tuesday.
Nevada sued in federal court in Reno last November, accusing the agency of illegally deciding it could transport the material without completing a full environmental review of potential health and safety dangers.
Although Nevada wasn’t aware at the time, the government had already shipped a half metric ton of plutonium from South Carolina to the Nevada National Security Site, about 90 miles (145 kilometers) northwest of Las Vegas. That site is separate from but close to the Yucca Mountain site in the Mojave Desert where the Trump administration wants to build a high-level radioactive waste repository.
Nevada says the Trump administration abused “top secret” classifications to meet a court order to remove a ton of weapons-grade plutonium from the Savannah River site in South Carolina by Jan. 1, 2020.
While Nevada’s appeal was pending, Energy Secretary Rick Perry sent a letter to Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, a Nevada Democrat, pledging to expedite removal of the plutonium already sent to Nevada — beginning in 2021 — and promising no more will be sent there.
He’s visited the site twice in recent months and provided a classified briefing to Gov. Steve Sisolak to try to allay the state’s concerns.
The radioactive material isn’t intended to be unpacked in Nevada, only temporarily stored before it is moved again, most likely to New Mexico or Texas for reprocessing for use in building nuclear weapons.
The Energy Department has said it expects to move the plutonium from Nevada to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico “or another facility” by the “2026-2027 timeframe.”
Nevada’s lawyers argued that Energy Department couldn’t be trusted because of past misrepresentations about the covert shipment. The state said U.S. officials selectively declassified information as it suited their needs.
The Energy Department insists the plutonium was properly classified for security.
It disclosed the material was in Nevada on Jan. 30, the same day Judge Miranda Du in Reno denied a state request to temporarily halt all shipments. She also ruled that the matter was moot.
Nevada argued in its appeal to the 9th Circuit that the case wasn’t moot partly because the government had “voluntarily” ceased the shipments and could resume them at any time.
But the court ruled that “the alleged injury was no longer redressable.”
Pisanelli Bice was named in Vegas Inc.’s “Legal notes: Local award winners, Aug. 12, 2019″, highlighting a number of their top attorneys for locally won awards.
Las Vegas, NV – A Hong Kong businessman who claims Las Vegas Sands Corp. owed him $347 million for helping the company gain access to Macau’s lucrative gambling market reached a confidential settlement with the casino chain on Thursday in Nevada state court.
Terms of the settlement were not disclosed when Clark County Circuit Court Judge Rob Bare dismissed the jury. The previous day attorneys for plaintiff Richard Suen and LVS delivered their opening statements in a trial that had been slated to run through March.
The trial would have featured testimony from LVS CEO Sheldon Adelson, however Judge Bare ruled Adelson’s ongoing cancer treatments would prevent him from participating. LVS argued Suen only deserved $3.8 million for helping LVS expand into Macau, a Chinese territory near Hong Kong, in the early 2000’s.
Representatives for the parties did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Thursday’s settlement marked an end to long-running litigation that saw two previous jury verdicts thrown out by appeals courts. An initial trial in 2008 resulted in a $43.8 million verdict for Suen, and another in 2013 (also recorded by CVN and available to subscribers) ended in a $70 million award that later grew to more than $100 million with interest.
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RENO, Nev. (AP) — Nevada’s latest bid to block incoming shipments of weapons-grade plutonium points to the U.S. Energy Department’s own scientific warnings about the dangers of prematurely moving the highly radioactive material out of South Carolina.
State lawyers say in briefs filed this week with the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that the Trump administration is engaged in a clandestine “charade” intended to turn Nevada “into the nation’s radioactive dump.”
They want the San Francisco-based court to overturn a Reno judge’s refusal to temporarily halt all plutonium shipments to a site near Las Vegas.
U.S. District Judge Miranda Du denied the request Jan. 30, saying any potential harm was speculative. That was the same day the government revealed it secretly shipped a half metric ton (1,102 pounds) of plutonium from South Carolina to Nevada sometime before Nov. 30.
Nevada lawyers said in Monday’s filing that the “stealth” truck shipment increased residents’ radiation exposure equivalent to getting 100 to 200 chest X-rays annually for three years.
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Two years after a wrenching hearing on a possible death penalty ban, and just weeks after an inmate who was stymied in his quest to die at the hands of the state took his own life, Nevada lawmakers are once again grappling with ending capital punishment.
Democratic Assemblyman Ozzie Fumo and Democratic state Sen. James Ohrenschall are sponsoring AB149, which seeks to abolish the death penalty, and the Senate introduced a second such bill from the pair — SB246, which strikes language allowing the death penalty for first-degree murder — on Friday.
Nevada has not executed someone since 2006, even though there are 77 people on death row, largely because condemned inmates are entitled to what often becomes decades of appeals.
“We need to get that conversation started,” said Fumo, a criminal defense attorney. “There’s a misconception out there about what the death penalty means. I think most people in favor of it think when you get the death penalty, you’re executed within a year. And when they find out that Nevada just doesn’t do it, they change.”
The bills come against the backdrop of the case of Scott Dozier, who was convicted of two murders in the early 2000s and later opted to give up any further appeals of his death sentence. He was twice scheduled for execution and it was twice postponed over legal issues — first over concern about the humaneness of an untried lethal injection combination and later when drugmaker Alvogen objected to its product being used to kill someone.
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