The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously held that a settlement of environmental liabilities must resolve a CERCLA-specific liability to give rise to a contribution action under §113(f)(3)(B), in a lawsuit concerning a landfill in Guam formerly owned by the U.S. Navy. After entering into a consent decree...

The Ninth Circuit affirmed a lower court ruling in a lawsuit concerning the U.S. government's and California's recovery of cleanup costs from a hazardous waste spill in the Sierra Nevada foothills that released toxic amounts of arsenic into local groundwater. Plaintiffs sued the company that had acq...

The D.C. Circuit affirmed in part and reversed in part a lower court's dismissal of a conservation group's suit to block the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) from constructing a border wall near the National Butterfly Center in southern Texas. The group argued that the Department's presence on ...

A district court held that William Perry Pendley was unlawfully serving as the acting director of BLM. The governor of Montana and the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation argued that Pendley was unlawfully serving as the acting director in violation of the Appointments Clause, t...

The Tenth Circuit upheld a lower court ruling ordering mining and finance companies to comply with EPA's requests for information related to cleanup of a contaminated site in Utah. The companies argued that EPA exceeded its authority under CERCLA when it issued the information requests, the requests...

The Third Circuit held that a PRP's settlement with New Jersey resolving its state-law liability in connection with contamination at a municipal landfill did not protect the party from lawsuits seeking contribution toward expenditures made by EPA on the same site. The district court had concluded th...