The Supreme Court of Montana affirmed a lower court’s award of almost $41 million in damages to the state of Montana from a wholesale electric generator for its use of state-owned riverbeds at its hydroelectric generation facilities.  The court held that title to the riverbeds passed to M...

The Ninth Circuit vacated a lower court decision that granted a preliminary injunction prohibiting the enforcement of California Penal Code §599f, which bans the slaughter and inhumane handling of nonambulatory animals, against federally regulated swine slaughterhouses. Plaintiff, a trade assoc...

A district court allowed negligence claims against the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) to continue in seven lawsuits stemming from a coal-ash spill, but it held that the TVA is not subject to punitive damages. Plaintiffs filed four class action complaints and four non-class action complaints seekin...

A California appellate court affirmed a lower court decision that held that the California Regional Water Quality Control Board (Board) had no authority to enforce state law governing waste discharge to several hydroelectric dams operating under a federal license. The United States Supreme Court, fo...

A California appellate court affirmed a lower court order clarifying and enforcing a prior decision, which had defined the rights of parties interested in the production of groundwater from the Seaside Basin, by restricting a water management district’s authority to require environmental revie...

A California appellate court affirmed a lower court’s issuance of a writ of mandate directing the city of Watsonville to, among other things, set aside its certification of a final environmental impact report (EIR) and its approval of a plan to develop a residential area in an area located adj...

In a case arising from a catastrophic oil spill in Buzzards Bay, a district court granted summary judgment in favor of the United States to find that aspects of the Massachusetts Oil Spill Prevention Act (MOSPA) were preempted by the federal Ports and Waterways Safety Act of 1972 (PWSA). The U.S. Co...

The D.C. Circuit denied a petition to review FERC's approval of a construction project that would allow a natural gas importer to import greater quantities of liquefied natural gas and distribute it in gaseous form. The petitioner, a utility, argued that higher volumes of regasified liquefied natura...

The First Circuit dismissed a land trust's claim that a statute revoking its title to lands in a canal area amounted to a taking and violated its due process rights. The statute amended Law 489, which among other things, created the land trust and transferred to the trust title to certain lands that...

The Federal Circuit held that landowners seeking compensation for the alleged taking of their respective reversionary property interests under the National Trail Systems Act were permitted to opt in to a class action lawsuit against the government. The landowners alleged that the conversion of a rai...