Specifically, the State of New York passed a law which required private companies that do business with the state to equip the trucks they operate with expensive exhaust filters.
Riccelli Enterprises filed a lawsuit against the state and won this month. The DEC, who already announced it planned to appeal the decision, was also sued for applying this law to private business owners as well.
“If this had gone, it would have put probably 80 to 90 percent of the trucking companies in New York state out of business and it would have cost thousands of jobs,” attorney William Gilberti from Syracuse law firm Gilberti, Stinziano, Heintz and Smith, the ones who handled the lawsuit on behalf of the trucking company, was quoted as saying by Syracuse.com “It would have been financially catastrophic.”
The “financially catastrophic” law would have cost Riccelli, for instance, between $10,000 and $20,000 for each of its trucks. That might not seem much, but when you multiply the sum with the 400 heavy trucks operated by the company, that perception changes.
Justice Donald Greenwood decided that the Diesel Emissions Reduction Act of 2006 can only apply, as stated, to the “diesel-powered heavy duty vehicle that is owned by, operated by or on behalf of, or leased by state agencies.”
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