A district court held that the U.S. Forest Service's travel management plan for the Salmon-Challis National Forest violates NEPA. Environmental groups argued that the travel plan fails to ensure that motor vehicle use is properly sited and managed on the Forest in order to minimize adverse environme...
A Pennsylvania appellate court held that an independent contractor hired to test emissions at a beryllium plant had no legal duty to warn third parties about the health risks stemming from those emissions. To be held liable under §324A of the Restatement (Second) of Torts, the consultant must have ...
A district court granted a motion to transfer the West Virginia environmental agency's action against EPA and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers challenging their permitting processes for coal mining to the D.C. District Court for consolidation with another case filed by a mining industry trad...
A district court ruled in favor of the defendant in a property owners' suit seeking to recover damages, cleanup costs, and a cleanup injunction resulting from environmental contamination on their property allegedly caused by an oil company. The owners failed to prove by a preponderance of t...
A district court upheld the FWS' biological opinion and the U.S. Forest Service's EIS and record of decision for the Idaho Roadless Rule. The court therefore denied environmental groups' request to enjoin the rule and replace it with the nationwide roadless rule that was enacted in 2001. The...
The First Circuit, in a case of first impression, vacated a lower court decision that it should abstain from hearing a RCRA citizen suit concerning the cleanup of contamination caused by leaking USTs at a former gasoline filling station in Puerto Rico. The pendency of parallel state administ...
The Ninth Circuit granted citizen groups' petition for review of a final action by EPA approving in part and disapproving in part revisions to California's SIP for meeting CAA air quality standards for ozone. EPA's failure to order California to submit a revised attainment plan for the South...
The D.C. Circuit upheld the dismissal of a Native American tribe's case against DOE asking it to clean up two contaminated sites under the Uranium Mill Tailings Remediation and Control Act (UMTRCA). The sites, located on Navajo tribal land, were contaminated by Word War II and Cold War era u...
The Ninth Circuit vacated and remanded DOE's energy transmission congestion study and national interest electric transmission (NIET) corridor designations prepared under the Energy Policy Act of 2005 (EPAct). The EPAct added §216 to the Federal Power Act, requiring DOE to prepare the conges...
The Third Circuit dismissed a petition for review of an EPA letter opining that facilities operated by a landfill and a neighboring energy company were under common control for purposes of air emissions permitting. The landfill owner challenged EPA's determination under CAA §307(b)(1), whic...