A federal judge dismissed on Wednesday Nucor’s lawsuit against Big River Steel, ruling that Nucor couldn't use the court system to bypass state regulators who had already given the Big River Steel permission to build a new mill nearby in Arkansas.
US District Judge Leon Holmes ruled the lawsuit, in which Nucor Steel tried to halt construction of the $1.3 million Osceola mill—20 miles from Nucor’s Blytheville facility—is not authorized under the citizen lawsuit provision of the federal Clean Air Act and his court has no jurisdiction over the case.
A statement released by Big River Steel said: "Nucor's ongoing legal challenges aimed at preventing a competitor from entering the market is an abuse of the legal system. Given that Nucor is the largest steel producer in North America with almost 25 percent of the steel production capacity, Big River Steel continues to wonder why Nucor is spending so much time and energy trying to prevent a company that will represent less than 1.5 percent of the North American steel production from entering the market."
Nucor did not release a statement but had argued in the lawsuit that according to the Clean Air Act, a citizen lawsuit is authorized against anyone alleged to be violating an emission standard, or anyone who proposes to build or builds a "major emitting facility" without a permit.
Holmes did not agree. “Big River Steel's motion to dismiss is based on the commonsense observations that it cannot be in violation of an emission standard ... because the mill is still under construction and is not operational, so it is not emitting anything; and it cannot be guilty of constructing a major emitting facility without a permit because it has a permit,” said Holmes in his ruling.