Wednesday, September 01, 2010

Silly LHC Court Case Thrown Out

We all know it would come to that, but it is nice to finally hear it. The appeals by Walter Wagner and Luis Sancho has been thrown out. We knew that it had no ground based on the physics, but in the end, it was thrown out on procedural grounds.

"Wagner cannot demonstrate that he has standing. A plaintiff alleging a procedural injury, such as Wagner, must still establish injury in fact. See Laub v. U.S. Dep’t. of Interior, 342 F.3d 1080, 1086 (9th Cir. 2003). Injury in fact requires some 'credible threat of harm.' Cent. Delta Water Agency v. United States, 306 F.3d 938, 950 (9th Cir. 2002). At most, Wagner has alleged that experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (the 'Collider') have 'potential adverse consequences.' Speculative fear of future harm does not constitute an injury in fact sufficient to confer standing. Mayfield, 599 F.3d at 970.

"Even if Wagner has demonstrated injury in fact, he nevertheless fails to satisfy the causality or redressability prongs set out in Lujan. The European Center for Nuclear Research ('CERN') proposed and constructed the Collider, albeit with some U.S. government support. The U.S. government enjoys only observer status on the CERN council, and has no control over CERN or its operations. Accordingly, the alleged injury, destruction of the earth, is in no way attributable to the U.S. government's failure to draft an environmental impact statement.
 So there!

Zz.

1 comment:

Ptrslv72 said...

in R. Penner's blog you can even find a quite amusing transcript of the hearing:
http://sciforums.com/showpost.php?p=2571435&postcount=283
Cheers, Ptrslv72