International trucks on display at a show in China, April 2011. Creative Commons-licensed photo by Flickr user SimonQ.

In a followup to my story last month, I just wrote about a development in Navistar v. EPA, the lawsuit that the truck company with the local manufacturing arm filed against the environment agency.

How this setback for Navistar will affect the overall suit, if at all, I’m not sure. I don’t have a cadre of legal experts yet in my contacts. I could have lifted a quote from Law360, but a full subscription — the only option available — is out of reach for our newsroom.

Yet, I used the service to get the initial information. Without it, I wouldn’t have known to do the story.

This is I think the third time I’ve used Law360’s free case law updates (narrowed to the environment subject area) to find a story. A couple months back, my editors and I tried to subscribe, so that I could read full articles. It’s just not worth it. I think they said $1,200 a month. With their free daily updates, I can just read the first few graphs and get the case number for PACER, circumventing the news company. Obviously the most valuable thing is the timely news update itself, and they’ve giving it away.

My editors would love to pay Law360 on a per-article basis, or at least on a single-user basis. No dice. The company should really consider a less-costly option for smaller-market news reporters.