United States v. Chevron Corporation

In October 2009 a magistrate judge in Louisiana refused to accept the guilty plea of an oil company to MBTA charges involving the deaths of pelicans that had become trapped in the outer casing of a wellhead operated by the company. Chevron had self-reported the event and, prior to charging, rectified the hazard by installing a steel grate to prevent future entrapments. The Magistrate concluded that MBTA charges are inapplicable to industry actions whose danger to migratory birds is unforeseeable, that the statute was aimed at people who “hunt and trap migratory birds,” and that absurd results, like windshield/skyscraper prosecutions, could result from unfettered application of the strict-liability provisions to all migratory bird takings. According to the Magistrate, the employment of such caissons was legal and prevalent in the industry, and the regulations implementing the MBTA were clearly not intended to “apply to commercial ventures when, occasionally, protected species might be incidentally killed as a result of totally legal and permissible activities.”