lawsuit

The state of Michigan is accusing a former paper mill owner of sending contaminated waste to a composting site for decades in the Thumb region. The lawsuit seeks payments from Domtar Industries for identifying the contamination, near Port Huron, and to restore areas affected by PFAS. The lawsuit, filed Friday, accuses Domtar of knowing that the waste was contaminated, despite telling regulators that it was inert. There's been no comment from Domtar. The state says it learned about the contamination in 2019. PFAS compounds are called "forever chemicals" because they don't break down in the environment or the human body and can accumulate over time.Domtar, based in Fort Mill, South Carolina, said it doesn't comment on lawsuits.

A conservation group is suing in federal court over a U.S. agency's timeline for dredging a Georgia shipping channel, saying dredging in the summertime would threaten rare sea turtles. A lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Savannah targets the Army Corps of Engineers. Georgia environmental group One Hundred Miles says the agency plans to conduct harbor dredging off the port city of Brunswick next summer during the nesting season for rare loggerhead sea turtles. The Army Corps has avoided maintenance dredging outside the winter months in Georgia and the Carolinas for three decades to help protect sea turtles. An Army Corps spokeswoman declined to comment on pending litigation.

A coalition of conservative-leaning states is trying to keep in place a Trump-era public health rule that allows many asylum seekers to be turned away at the southern U.S. border. Late Monday, the 15 states moved to intervene in legal proceedings surrounding the public health rule referred to as Title 42. The rule uses emergency authority to allow the United States to keep migrants from seeking asylum at the border, based on the need to help prevent the spread of COVID-19. The 15 states that filed the motion to intervene are Arizona, Alabama, Alaska, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wyoming.

President Joe Biden's plan to forgive student loan debt for millions of borrowers lost another battle in court on Monday when a federal appeals court panel agreed to a preliminary injunction halting the program while an appeal plays out. The ruling by the three-judge panel from the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis came days after a federal judge in Texas blocked the program, saying it usurped Congress' power to make laws. The Texas case was appealed and the administration is likely to appeal the 8th Circuit ruling as well.

The cheerleading company that makes the sport's top uniforms, camps and competitions is vehemently denying accusations it helped facilitate alleged sexual abuse at gyms across the Southeast outlined in a series of federal lawsuits. Varsity Spirit has been named by civil rights attorney Bakari Sellers and lawyers with the Strom Law Firm in complaints alleging the sexual abuse of cheerleaders by coaches at individual gyms in North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee. Attorneys have said leaders at Varsity Spirit failed to provide a safe environment for athletes. Varsity Spirit denied the accusations, and has hired a defamation lawyer.

Lawsuits filed to stop the removal of memorials to Confederate leaders and a pro-slavery congressman in a South Carolina city have been dropped. The Post and Courier reports that the American Heritage Association helped fund one of the lawsuits. It had been filed by descendants of John C. Calhoun, a former congressman and vice president who died before the Civil War. The suit had opposed the city of Charleston's removal of Calhoun's statue. Another suit opposed the removal of a Robert E. Lee Memorial Highway marker in Charleston, and the renaming of an auditorium that had been named after a treasury secretary of the Confederacy.

A lawsuit alleging the rampant sexual abuse of underage athletes at a competitive cheerleading gym in South Carolina has been amended to name six more coaches as defendants and three more accusers. The accusers — now seven female and two male — say in the federal lawsuit amended Thursday that they were sexually abused by coaches at Rockstar Cheerleading and Dance in Greenville, which is in the northwestern corner of the state. The accusers' lawyers allege that sexual abuse at the gym could date back two decades. According to the lawsuit, the abuse ranged from rape and forced oral sex to molestation and pressuring children as young as 13 to send nude photos of themselves to coaches.

The tangled legal fight between the Carolina Panthers and York County could be headed for a civil jury in Delaware, if a bankruptcy court there will hear it.

A lawsuit alleges that police illegally detained a South Carolina couple when officers outside the jurisdiction raided their home in the middle of the night. According to complaints filed Tuesday, Shane Glover and Codie Fuller were held at gunpoint and handcuffed while unclothed by officers with the Holly Hill and Santee Police Departments on Aug. 2, 2020. The couple's lawyer says the raid was made without any outstanding warrant and constitutes an "illegal kidnapping." It's unclear what prompted the raid. Neither department immediately responded to requests for comment. Prior to the raid, Glover says he called the Holly Hill police supervisor after learning about allegedly "inappropriate personal comments" made by an officer to Fuller.

A federal lawsuit alleges that unsanitary conditions and staff negligence caused the death of a 27-year-old man detained in a South Carolina jail. Police arrested Lason Butler on Jan. 31 on charges of reckless driving, failure to stop for blue lights and driving with a suspended license. The lawsuit filed Wednesday says that he was found dead on Feb. 12 with fresh rat bites and no running water. An autopsy report found that Butler died of dehydration. The lawsuit alleges that jail staff failed to provide "sanitary conditions, appropriate health care, and relief from solitary confinement."