The First Circuit held that neither the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) nor the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA) waive U.S. sovereign immunity in a property owner's suit to recover monetary damages for its cleanup of past oil contamination on a former U.S. Navy base. RCRA contains no exp...

The Tenth Circuit dismissed a Native American tribe's appeal of a General Services Administration determination that property underlying a former military installation no longer lies within the tribe's present-day reservation boundaries and that the tribe is therefore not entitled to the property. T...

The Seventh Circuit held that a residential treatment facility's §1983 action against a city for denying the facility's request for a land use variance was time-barred by Indiana's two-year personal injury statute of limitations. The facility advanced an interrelated set of arguments drawing on...

New York's highest court held that the New York City Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) Water Supply Police are authorized to enforce traffic laws within the city's watershed. The DEP officers were authorized as police officers under the state's criminal procedure law to stop the defendant...

A district court held that a railroad company's negligence claim against a tank installer is barred by Texas' repose statute. The case arose after a tank located on a chemical company's property ruptured and released chemicals onto neighboring railroad property. The state's repose statute bars the r...

The Court held that the "substantially advances" formula, announced in Agins v. City of Tiburon, 447 U.S. 255, 10 ELR 20361 (1980), is not an appropriate test for determining whether a government regulation effects a Fifth Amendment taking. The "substantially advances" formula prescribes an inquiry ...

A California appellate court affirmed a $495,850 judgment awarded to a developer in an eminent domain action concerning two parcels of land, each containing a manufactured home. The manufactured homes were "improvements pertaining to the realty" under the state's eminent domain law and as such were ...

The D.C. Circuit dismissed as moot the U.S. Department of the Interior's appeal of a district court order that remanded for further rulemaking and temporarily suspended the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) and the National Marine Fisheries Service's (NMFS) "no surprises rule." The government arg...

The Seventh Circuit upheld the dismissal of a nonprofit's untimely appeal of certain U.S. Forest Service projects. The nonprofit relied on the Forest Service's statement as to the due date for the filings, but the statement was wrong and the Forest Service therefore refused to hear them. Neither the...

The Court overruled Alaska's exceptions to a Special Master's report recommending that summary judgment be granted in favor of the United States in a dispute concerning title to two areas of submerged lands. The first area underlies waters in the Alexander Archipelago that are more than three nautic...