Appeals court reaffirms former Pilot Company President Mark Hazelwood deserves a new trial
The Knoxville News-Sentinel 12/30/2020 Jamie Satterfield, Knoxville News Sentinel
Secretly recorded audio of Pilot Flying J executives UP NEXT
A federal appellate court refused Wednesday to overturn its decision granting former Pilot Company president Mark Hazelwood and two subordinates a new trial.
In a one-page order with no explanation, a two-judge majority of the 6th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals rejected a request by federal prosecutors to reconsider the court s decision in October to grant a a new trial to Hazelwood and former subordinates Scott “Scooter” Wombold and Heather Jones.
Knoxville News Sentinel
In the first ruling of its kind in Tennessee, the state Supreme Court says opioid makers and distributors who act like drug dealers can be sued as drug dealers.
In an unanimous decision authored by Justice Sharon Lee and released Thursday, the high court ruled Big Pharma can be sued under the Tennessee Drug Dealer Liability act a state law that allows “innocent third parties” of illegal drug dealing to sue drug dealers for damages.
The court ruled that opioid makers and distributors cannot shield themselves from the law by arguing they make and sell legal drugs approved by the Food and Drug Administration and, therefore, cannot be labeled illegal drug dealers.
A Legacy of Contamination, How the Kingston coal ash spill unearthed a nuclear nightmare, Grist By Austyn Gaffney on Dec 15, 2020 This story was published in partnership with the Daily Yonder.
………………………………….The apparent mixing of fossil fuel and nuclear waste streams underscores the long relationship between the
Kingston and Oak Ridge facilities
………… .
……….In 2017, a former chemist named Dan Nichols stumbled upon a news story that revealed the existence of the additional health problems TVA feared. High levels of uranium had been measured in the urine of a former cleanup worker named Craig Wilkinson. Like Thacker, Wilkinson had worked the night shift. After dredges piped the coal ash back onshore, Wilkinson used heavy equipment to scoop, flip, and dry the wet ash along the Ball Field.
The Daily Yonder
This story was published in partnership with Grist.
In 2009, App Thacker was hired to run a dredge along the Emory River in eastern Tennessee. Picture an industrialized fleet modeled after Huck Finn’s raft: Nicknamed Adelyn, Kylee, and Shirley, the blue, flat-bottomed boats used mechanical arms called cutterheads to dig up riverbeds and siphon the excavated sediment into shoreline canals. The largest dredge, a two-story behemoth called the Sandpiper, had pipes wide enough to swallow a push lawnmower. Smaller dredges like Thacker’s scuttled behind it, scooping up excess muck like fish skimming a whale’s corpse. They all had the same directive: Remove the thick grey sludge that clogged the Emory.