Michigan v. United States Army Corps of Engineers
A district court denied various states' motion to issue a preliminary injunction compelling the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to take all available measures to prevent the emigration of invasive silver and bighead carp through the Chicago Area Waterway System into Lake Michigan. In the face of multia...
Wild Fish Conservancy v. Salazar
The Ninth Circuit held that FWS' biological opinion addressing a hatchery project's impact on the bull trout in the Columbia River violates the ESA. Although the hatchery project is intended to mitigate a dam's impacts on Chinook salmon, it has seriously disrupted the migration and spawning activity...
Center for Biological Diversity v. United States Department of Agriculture
The Ninth Circuit reversed a lower court's grant of summary judgment in favor of an environmental group requiring the USDA, under FOIA, to disclose the GPS coordinates of wolf depredations to which it had responded. The district court held that the coordinates were not exempt from disclosure...
Apache Corp. v. W&T Offshore, Inc.
The Fifth Circuit held that a "farmout agreement," under which the owner of a federal offshore oil and gas lease transferred its rights to drill to another drilling operator, does not require the operator to bear a proportionate share of the costs of decommissioning an oil platform at the le...