California Construction Trucking Association (CCTA)

As the CARB Truck and Bus Regulation went into effect on schedule Jan. 1, there was an interesting resurgence of interest in our two legal actions to stop this regulation. On Jan. 26, I guess we will get to see whether or not the biased media can dissuade a federal judge enough to ignore pretty sound and settled federal legal precedents concerning preemption.

As we discussed last month, we filed a motion for a preliminary injunction in November and Brooks was present at the court hearing for this action on Dec. 15, 2011. Surprisingly, no formal order has been issued yet. We filed a motion for a preliminary injunction in federal court seeking to put the truck and bus regulation on hold, at least until the court can rule on our summary judgment motion. Although the judge indicated he was going to deny our motion for a preliminary injunction back on Dec. 15, 2011, again no formal order has been issued yet.  

 All that we have is a brief notation on the court’s docket which reads as follows:  “After hearing argument from the parties and for the reasons set forth on the record, the Court denied the Plaintiff's Motion for Preliminary Injunction. A formal order will be issued shortly.”

As soon as the formal order is issued, we will circulate it.

Meanwhile, the other aspect of the main case continues. In response to our motion for summary judgment filed in February 2011, CARB and NRDC have responded with an all-out attack.  Not only have they fielded numerous declarations and briefs in opposition to our motion for summary judgment, they have each filed their own motions for summary judgment, arguing the case should be summarily decided in their favor.

We have filed responsive pleadings in advance of the hearing set for Jan. 26, 2012.

Interestingly, in their pleadings, NRDC and CARB present two principal arguments. First, they argue that the F4A (the preemption law we are arguing that CARB regulations violate) was limited in scope to prohibiting “economic regulation” of motor carriers, and did not intend to prohibit environmental regulation Second, they argue that even if the CARB rule is the type of regulation to which the F4A was directed, the rule actually falls within the “safety exception” to preemption. They attempt to weave an argument that public health and motor carrier safety are the same in this case. We obviously oppose both contorted premises, and hope to persuade the court that public health and the motoring public safety are two entirely distinct concepts.

We also noticed that both groups entered hundreds of pages of CARB’s junk science documents to the record. They actually included the “strike-through” version of CARB’s regulation. Apparently CARB couldn't even provide the attorneys a non-strike-through version of their own regulation two weeks before the rule went into effect. They also wanted their outrageous premature death related health claims to be included in all their pleadings. In response we were able to get both Prof. Enstrom and Dr. Stan Young to introduce pleadings which totally refutes all the PM junk science that has been allowed to infect this area of public health science – for the record.