The Eighth Circuit, in a CWA enforcement action filed by the United States and the state of Missouri against a water district, affirmed a lower court decision denying the state's motion to dismiss the district's counterclaims and to strike its affirmative defenses claiming financial inability to com...

The U.S. Supreme Court held that a justice sitting on West Virginia's highest court should have recused himself from a case involving a coal company that contributed large sums of money toward the judge's election campaign. In that case, a jury found the company liable for fraudulent misrepresentati...

A California trial court held that a city's environmental impact report for a major expansion of an oil refinery in Richmond, California, violated the California Environmental Quality Act's new greenhouse gas requirements. Although the city identified a standard of no net increases in greenhouse gas...

A district court held that the pollution exclusion clause contained in a transport company's insurance policy does not cover bodily injuries stemming from the release of a naturally occurring gas. The case arose after dock workers were fatally asphyxiated due to argon leaking from one of the company...

The U.S Supreme Court held that a local ordinance that imposes a personal property tax on certain boats and vessels but contains exceptions that, in effect, largely limit its applicability to large oil tankers violates the U.S. Constitution's Tonnage Clause, Art. I, §10, cl. 3. The ordinance im...

An Arkansas appellate court struck down a state permit allowing an electric company to build a $1.6 billion coal-fired power plant near the state's southwest border with Texas. The state public service commission failed to require the company to address alternative locations in its permit applicatio...

A district court held that a property owner's receipt of a "no further remediation" letter from the state environmental agency does not bar a neighboring company's lawsuit against it under RCRA. Under Illinois law, a no further remediation letter releases the recipient from further responsibilities ...

The Eighth Circuit affirmed a lower court decision denying a business trade association's motion to intervene in a CWA enforcement action filed against a local sewer district by Missouri and the United States. The complaint alleges that from 2000 to 2005, the district discharged raw sewage into loca...

The Supreme Court of California reversed a lower court decision holding that residents of a mobile home park may file suit against the county for failing to direct the park owner to notify the residents about contaminated drinking water. The residents claim that since at least 1995, the drinking wat...

A district court held that under Pennsylvania law, a property owner that agreed to hold the seller harmless for environmental claims does not become a successor to the seller's environmental liabilities. In a settlement agreement between the current and prior owners, the current owner promised to co...