The Ninth Circuit held that an insurance company breached its duty to defend a trucking equipment company when it refused to provide a defense after the company received letters from EPA notifying it of its potential liability under CERCLA for environmental contamination at the Portland Harbor Super...

The Fourth Circuit affirmed a lower court decision dismissing farmer's West Virginia common law trespass claims against a natural gas company. The landowners sought an injunction and damages stemming from on the company's drilling and operation of three natural gas wells on surface property owned by...

A D.C. court denied a conservative publication's motion for reconsideration of the court's earlier decision denying the publication's motion to dismiss a climate scientist defamation suit against it. There is sufficient evidence in the record to demonstrate that the scientist is likely to succeed on...

A California court issued a tentative decision upholding the California Air Resource Board's (CARB's) authority to sell greenhouse gas allowances at auction under the California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, also known as Assembly Bill 32 (AB 32). The court tentatively agreed that the auctio...

A Texas appellate court affirmed a lower court decision that commercial pecan growers suffered a regulatory taking when the Edwards Aquifer Authority—a water reclamation district—denied the growers' request for a water permit for one of their pecan orchards and granted a limited permit for a sec...

The Supreme Court of Washington upheld an administrative order the state environmental agency issued to a farmer, directing him to take several steps to curb pollution of a creek that runs through his property. A lower court invalidated the order, ruling that it was unsupported by substantial eviden...

The Seventh Circuit reversed a lower court decision finding a Wisconsin mine operator liable under the CWA for discharging copper into navigable waters without a permit. The CWA's permit shield provision provides that if a NPDES permit holder discharges pollutants in accordance with the terms of its...

The Second Circuit upheld a lower court's permanent injunction barring the state of Vermont from bringing an enforcement action, or taking other action, to compel the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant to shut down after its license expires on March 21, 2012, if it fails to obtain legislative approv...

A district court held that a nonprofit law firm may conduct limited discovery in connection with its FOIA request for records regarding any EPA rule or regulation for which public notice has not been made, but which was contemplated or under consideration for public notice, between January 1, 2012, ...

A district court dismissed groups' lawsuit challenging BLM's approval of a 370-megawatt utility-scale solar power plant currently under construction in the Mojave Desert. BLM's decision to consider cumulative impacts within a single EIS was not arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or other...