So how to convince the drillers that they will not incur a major environmental liability?

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That payment was supposed to resolve any environmental liability the company had, while transferring the responsibility for any remaining problem to Petroecuador.

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Developers cheered two years ago when Congress passed the Small Business Liability Relief and Brownfields Revitalization Act, which gave them protection from environmental liability when they redeveloped brownfields--mostly abandoned industrial sites that might be contaminated.

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Clive Garner says there are rules of strict liability in environmental cases like this.

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This feeling extends beyond employment law to areas such as product liability and environmental damage.

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Kasunic's revised bill had been making its way through the Senate when it was tabled abruptly last week after environmental groups complained it would give drillers too much protection from liability.

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America's environmental statutes are a telling exception: they do clearly assign criminal liability to top managers, and with good results.

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"Since the environmental implications of the projects are not fully understood, BP assumes no liability for unexpected or unintended consequences of these projects, " the company said in a posting on its website.

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The city would give incentives to developers to clean up the kind of sites that fell in the light to mid-range of the pollution spectrum and thus languished in state and federal clean-up programs for their lack of severity: if developers complied with environmental guidelines and submitted to oversight, they would be spared the specter of future liability.

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