Crystal clear ashy water.
Duke Energy, most recently known for the
Dan River coal ash spill as well as being
prosecuted for the Dan River coal ash spill, was back in court trying to stay slightly out of court—
for 6 months at least.
A Delaware judge is considering Duke Energy's request for a six-month halt of a shareholder lawsuit prompted by a massive coal ash spill in North Carolina while the company tries to resolve related lawsuits and finalize a $102 million settlement of a federal criminal investigation.
What's the lawsuit about?
The shareholder plaintiffs accuse current and former Duke Energy officers and directors of breaching their fiduciary duties. Specifically, they claim Duke Energy officials knowingly allowed the company to repeatedly violate state and federal environmental laws, exposing it to hundreds of millions of dollars in fines, penalties and cleanup costs.
The plaintiffs argued that a delay was not warranted and that they should move forward with the preliminary actions and motions on the table—including Duke's attorney Kenneth Nachbar's attempts to have the case dismissed.
Nachbar argued that if the plaintiffs were truly acting in the company's best interests, it made no sense for them to pursue allegations that Duke Energy officials willfully violated environmental laws when the company was trying to defend itself from similar allegations in other lawsuits.
"It doesn't do the company any good to have purported champions of the company arguing in court that the company committed intentional violations of the law," Nachbar said.
The judge bailed Nachbar out by saying that delaying the case might help with finding out how much Duke management has actually cost its shareholders, which is a little more reasonable than what Nachbar was actually arguing—don't sue us, our negligence and bad management aside, we are all in this together!
The judge declined to rule on this decision until after the outcome of the DOJ case next week.