A district court held that a property owner's Minnesota Environmental Response and Liability Act (MERLA) claims against a former owner are not time barred even though the state agency issued a "decision document" describing the former owner's cleanup of the site as "final" well beyond the statute of...
The Ninth Circuit held that a 2007 voter-approved initiative that overturned a 2004 initiative giving property owners relief from development restrictions under Oregon land-use laws, or payment for the lost value of their land, did not violate the Contract Clause of the U.S. Constitution. Waivers gr...
A district court issued a temporary restraining order enjoining the shipment of Hawaiian garbage to a landfill located on lands ceded by the Yakama Nation in Washington State near the Columbia River. There are serious questions as to whether the USDA adequately analyzed the environmental impacts of ...
The U.S. Judicial Panel on Multistate Litigation consolidated and transferred to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana 77 lawsuits related to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The actions indisputably share factual issues concerning the cause (or causes) ...
A district court held that a research institute must turn over documents relating to its methyl tertiary butyl ether (MTBE) study to one of the plaintiffs in a consolidated multidistrict case against several gasoline companies for groundwater contamination stemming from their use of MTBE in gasoline...
A Louisiana appellate court reversed a lower court decision denying property owners' right to sue oil and gas companies for contamination and damages due to their past operations on the site. The operations were conducted under mineral leases that remain active today. The owners purchased the site i...
The Ninth Circuit denied a petition for review of a FERC order approving the construction of new facilities to allow for the flow of natural gas from Mexico northbound into southern California. FERC's EIS contained a reasonably thorough discussion of the environmental impact of its actions based on ...
A district court largely denied a tribe's motions for summary judgment on claims that the BLM violated NEPA and FLPMA in approving a gold mining and processing operation on and around Mt. Tenabo in Lander County, Nevada. The Ninth Circuit already issued a preliminary injunction requiring the BLM to ...
A district court denied Louisiana's motion to remand to state court its lawsuit against BP for damages stemming from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Louisiana originally filed the complaint in state court, asserting only a cause of action under state law and specifically stating that it "does not p...
The court affirms a state water court decision denying and dismissing with prejudice a county's applications for decrees for conditional water rights for a large water storage project west of the Continental Divide in the Upper Gunnison River Basin. The county argued that the basin contained ample w...