The court upholds a district court decision finding the neighbor of a food manufacturing facility 100% liable under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act for contaminating the facility's property. The court first holds that no genuine issue existed as to whether t...
The court affirms a district court order that dismissed a current property owner's contracts, implied covenant of good faith, and Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) claims against the previous owner. Before selling the property to the current owner in 1985...
The court reverses a district court decision granting summary judgment in favor of two corporations in a Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) action brought by a paper manufacturers' association seeking contribution for costs incurred in the investigation an...
The court holds that the owners and operators of public water systems in California violated the national primary drinking water regulations for microbiological contaminants, lead, and copper contained in the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) and holds them individually liable for those violations. The...
The last 18 months have produced particularly interesting juridical and administrative pronouncements in the areas of Clean Water Act (CWA or Act) jurisdiction, permits, standards, citizen suits, and other enforcement. On the jurisdictional front, we learned that "deep ripping" constitutes an "addition" of a pollutant by a "point source." We also learned that 25-year-old cases from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C.
Since the enactment of the Clean Water Act (CWA or Act) 28 years ago, the federal courts have been called upon to sort out the respective roles of the federal and state governments in connection with numerous aspects of the statute's implementation and enforcement. Congress has superimposed an additional layer of complexity on the CWA experiment in creative federalism—the citizen suit provision.
Friends of the Earth, Inc. v. Laidlaw Environmental Services (TOC), Inc. may prove to be the most important environmental decision since Chevron, U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council. Laidlaw's primary significance lies in its discussion of the injury component of the U.S. Supreme Court's now familiar three-part standing test.
In its first week of business during the new millennium, the U.S. Supreme Court decided Friends of the Earth, Inc. v. Laidlaw Environmental Services (TOC), Inc., and provided important clarifications about the law of standing in environmental citizen suits. Specifically, the Court rejected the narrow view of environmental injury-in-fact advocated by Justice Scalia and instead adhered to the broader view of injury-in-fact established in a nonenvironmental context by the Court's decision in Federal Elections Commission v. Akins.
As law students frequently discover during exams, the law of standing is easy to state but hard to apply. The basic rules are simple and well-settled. Under Article III of the U.S. Constitution, in order to invoke federal jurisdiction, the plaintiff must demonstrate the existence of an "injury-in-fact" that is "legally cognizable," "fairly traceable" to the defendant, and capable of being "redressed" by the court. Each of the terms in quotation marks seems clear enough on the surface but has proved remarkably tricky in practice.
adapted from Layla (by Eric Clapton and Jim Gordon)
What do we do when we get sued now
If the Supremes aren't on our side?
If we can't rely on standing constraints
Do they expect us to comply?