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California Native Plant Soc'y v. Rancho Cordova, City of

A California appellate court reversed a lower court decision that a city violated the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) in approving a residential and commercial development project. The lower court properly ruled that the city violated the Planning and Zoning Law because the city's genera...

In re Katrina Canal Breaches Consol. Litig.

A district court held that the due care and discretionary function exceptions to the Federal Tort Claims Act do not shield the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers from homeowners' lawsuit against it for damages stemming from flooding following Hurricane Katrina. Plaintiffs argued that the Corps failed to p...

American Trucking Ass'n v. Los Angeles, City of

The Ninth Circuit reversed and remanded a lower court decision denying the trucking industry's motion to preliminarily enjoin two California ports from implementing "concession agreements" designed, among other things, to reduce diesel emissions from trucks servicing container facilities at the port...

United States v. Navajo Nation

The U.S. Supreme Court held that a Native American tribe is not entitled to damages under the Indian Tucker Act (ITA) for an asserted breach of fiduciary duty by the Secretary of the Interior in connection with his failure promptly to approve a royalty rate increase under a coal lease the tribe exec...

Columbia Venture LLC v. South Carolina Wildlife Fed'n

The Fourth Circuit reversed a lower court order vacating certain base flood elevation determinations adopted by Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) for Richland County, South Carolina. The lower court vacated the determinations because FEMA failed to timely publish notice of the determination...

Hettinga v. United States

The D.C. Circuit reversed a lower court decision dismissing dairy farmers' action challenging the constitutionality of two amendments to the Agricultural Marketing Agreement Act. The dairy farmers alleged that the amendments, which subjected certain large producer-handlers of milk to contribution re...

Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership v. Salazar

A district court upheld the Bureau of Land Management's (BLM's) decision to grant oil and gas drilling permits in south-central Wyoming. BLM's decisions were not arbitrary, capricious, or otherwise unlawful under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). BLM took the requisite hard look at envir...

Save Strawberry Canyon v. Energy Dep't

A district court preliminarily enjoined the construction of a $113 million computer center in Berkeley, California. A citizens group raised serious questions going to the merits of its claim that the project is a "major federal action" under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). Moreover, ir...

Scott v. E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Co.

A district court presiding over a group of residents' class action lawsuit against a manufacturer for allegedly contaminating water supplies dismissed an individual's New Jersey Environmental Rights Act (ERA) claim against the company for failure to provide notice. A plaintiff seeking to bring a cla...

Appalachian Voices v. State Corp. Comm'n

The Virginia Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of Virginia Code §56-585.1(A)(6), a provision of the state's utility law that requires coal-fired power plants to use Virginia coal. Environmental groups, challenging the state's approval of the construction of a coal-fired power plant, ar...