The court affirms a magistrate judge's decision awarding an oil transporter $90,766 for damages arising from hazardous sludge loaded onto the transporter's barge by the seller of spent lube oil. The seller contracted with the transporter to carry 18,000 barrels of spent lube oil. The seller did not ...

The court holds that intervenors may not be granted a writ of mandamus directing a trial court to allow them to appear at a fairness hearing and object to a proposed class action settlement agreement between class members and a company that allegedly contaminated the class members' riparian property...

The court upholds a district court decision dismissing a pesticide manufacturer's malicious prosecution claim against an agent of the New York State environmental agency and dismissing its claim that the agency's use of administrative conservation appearance tickets (ACATs) is unconstitutional. Afte...

The court holds that the standard for admissibility of novel scientific evidence set forth in Frye v. United States, 293 F. 1013 (D.C. Cir. 1923), and State v. Mack, 292 N.W.2d 764 (Minn. 1980), rather than the standard set forth in Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc., 509 U.S. 579, 23 ELR ...

The court holds that a Native American tribe in California cannot regulate land use of fee-patented private property within its reservation boundary. A nonmember of the tribe that owned her land in fee sought to harvest timber. After receiving a state logging permit, the property owner sent a check ...

The court affirms in part and reverses in part a mining union's claim that the state of Utah breached a trust created for the establishment of a hospital for disabled miners by using the trust to construct a rehabilitation center for the general public. The court first holds that the Utah Enabling A...

The court holds that a gambling machine, known as the Lucky Tab II, used on Native American lands should be classified under the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act (IGRA) as a Class II aid, the use of which does not require a Native American tribe to first obtain state approval in a tribal-state compact. ...

The court holds that an insurance company is liable for neither indemnification nor defense costs incurred by a housing authority in a suit brought by a mother whose child suffered injuries from lead paint on the walls of the authority's housing complex. The court holds that the pollution exclusion ...

In a suit raising constitutional challenges to the siting of a regional low-level radioactive waste disposal facility, the court holds that freedom from environmental releases of nonnatural radiation is not a fundamental, unenumerated right protected by the Ninth Amendment, and differences in the fe...

The court rules that Exemption 4 of the Freedom of Information Act shields from public disclosure comprehensive reports, prepared and provided to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission by a nonprofit consortium of the nuclear utility industry, concerning the safety and reliability of operations at n...