Professor's LLM thesis cited in ABQB decision

According to the Globe & Mail, PricewaterhouseCoopers, the trustee in the bankruptcy of Sequoia, sued Calgary-based Perpetual and its CEO arguing that they knew assets they agreed to sell to Sequoia in 2016 would sink the buyer, and that the deal was not done as an arm’s-length transaction. Sequoia bought a Perpetual division that had thousands of aging gas wells along with nearly $134-million worth of reported environmental liability.

Nickie's thesis, Liability for Well Abandonment, Reclamation, Release of Substances and Contaminated Sites in Alberta: Does the Polluter or Beneficiary Pay? (Calgary: University of Calgary, 2000), is concerned with liability for cleaning up environmental damage caused by oil and gas activities in Alberta. Specifically, it considers four types of liability: liability for well abandonment, reclamation, release of substances and contaminated sites. It explores whether the current Alberta liability regime is consistent with the views from the literature on liability for environmental clean-up. It focuses upon three main issues: societal versus individual responsibility; grounds upon which to base liability; and the apportionment of liability amongst responsible persons.

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