The court affirms a district court decision that a county's 1998 acceptance of a 1987 irrevocable offer to dedicate a portion of beachfront property was not a taking of the current owner's property. The court first holds that the prior owners of the property that made offers to dedicate to the count...

The court affirms a district court's grant of summary judgment in favor of a transit authority that was sued in a qui tam action under the False Claims Act (FCA) by an employee of one of its subcontractors, but vacates the district court's award of attorney fees to be paid by the employee's attorney...

The court dismisses a coal mining association's claim against the Secretary of the Interior seeking to force the federal government to turn over approximately $1.3 billion allegedly due to the commonwealth of Kentucky under the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act's (SMCRA's) abandoned mine re...

The Court holds that state sovereign immunity bars the Federal Maritime Commission (FMC) from adjudicating a private party's complaint against a nonconsenting state. A cruise line offering gambling cruises sued the South Carolina State Ports Authority (SCSPA) for denying the cruise line's five appli...

The court preliminarily enjoins the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) from proceeding with a highway project that involves road construction and expansion through parkland. DOT prepared an environmental assessment (EA) and finding of no significant impact for the project instead of an environm...

The Court holds that a New York town's ordinance requiring all solid waste to be processed at a designated transfer station before leaving the town violates the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution. The avowed purpose of the ordinance is to retain the processing fees charged at the transfer stat...

The court holds that the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) does not apply to the Secretary of the Interior's designation of critical habitat under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). The court first holds that an Oregon county has standing to challenge the Secretary's failure to comply with NEP...

On remand from the U.S. Supreme Court, the court holds inadmissible under Fed. R. Evid. 702 expert testimony offered to prove that plaintiffs' mothers' ingestion of the drug Bendectin during pregnancy caused the plaintiffs to be born with limb-reduction birth defects. The court first refuses to rema...

The court holds that the U.S. Court of Federal Claims lacked jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. §1500 over a manufacturer's claim for compensation under the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution for response costs the manufacturer incurred cleaning up contaminated groundwater pursuant to a U.S. Enviro...

The court holds that a New Jersey landowner adequately stated a substantive due process claim under the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution when he alleged that a local zoning board arbitrarily or irrationally decided that the operation of a battery distribution business on his property vi...