Kansas Gas & Electric Co. v. United States
The Federal Claims court ordered DOE to pay three utility companies $10,632,454.83 for failing to collect spent nuclear fuel from the Wolf Creek Generating Station in Kansas in violation of their contract. The utilities' damages derive from their investigation of alternative spent nuclear fu...
Carijano v. Occidental Petroleum Corp.
The Ninth Circuit reversed a lower court decision dismissing a Peruvian Achuar indigenous group's lawsuit against an oil company for environmental contamination and the release of hazardous wastes. The complaint alleges that, during its 30 years in the Achuar territories, the oil company kno...
Nelson v. Kern
A California appellate court reversed a lower court decision denying a petition challenging the adequacy of a county's environmental analysis of a proposed surface mining operation on a 40-acre site in the foothills of the Southern Sierra Nevada mountain range. The county limited its environ...
Friends of the Juana Briones House v. City of Palo Alto
A California appellate court reversed a lower court decision ordering a city to set aside its approval of a permit to demolish an historic building and to comply with the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) before considering reissuance of the permit. CEQA does not apply to the demol...
Cherry Valley Pass Acres & Neighbors v. City of Beaumont
A California appellate court affirmed a lower court decision denying a petition challenging a city's approval of a project to build 560 residential units on a 200-acre site long used for agricultural purposes. A citizens group filed a petition, claiming that the environmental impact report (...
Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida v. South Florida Water Management District
The Supreme Court of Florida affirmed in part and reversed in part a lower court decision validating $650 million in "certificates of participation" to finance a water district's purchase of 73,000 acres of land owned by a sugar company for Everglades restoration purposes. Certificates of pa...
Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance v. Sierra
A district court held that environmental groups lack standing to challenge three decisions by the BLM and a decision by the Interior Board of Land Appeals concerning 39 federal oil and gas leases in Utah. The groups do not have standing because they have not shown that their members have suf...
Eastman v. Coffeyville Resources Refining & Marketing, LLC
A district court dismissed landowners' OPA claim against a company for damages stemming from an oil spill in the Verdigris River in Kansas, but denied the company's motion to dismiss the landowners' nuisance claim. The landowners failed to file their OPA claim within the three-year statute o...