A federal appeals court ruled that the state of Michigan may pursue its legal challenge to Enbridge’s Line 5 petroleum pipeline in state court, reversing a lower court’s decision and handing a win to Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel.
Details: The decision from the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals did not address the merits of the case but found that Enbridge waited too long to ask that the case be moved to federal court. Therefore, the case would go back to Michigan’s 30th Circuit Court for the County of Ingham, the venue where Nessel had originally filed the state’s complaint, the appeals court’s three judges ruled.
Nessel’s office first filed her complaint on July 12, 2019, seeking to shut down Line 5, a twin pipeline system that carries 540,000 barrels per day of oil and other fuel from Western Canada through the Strait of Mackinac into Ontario. The law allows 30 days for a defendant to remove the case to a different court, the appeals judges noted.
“Enbridge needed to file its notice of removal by August 12, 2019,” Circuit Court Judge Richard Allen Griffin wrote in the ruling. “Enbridge missed that deadline by over two years.”