The Ninth Circuit held that the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management's (BOEM's) EIS analyzing the environmental effects of proposed oil and gas development leases in the Chukchi Sea of the northwest coast of Alaska violated NEPA. Although the EIS properly took account of incomplete or unavailable infor...

A district court dismissed as time-barred Puerto Rico's lawsuit against two gasoline suppliers for groundwater contamination. The commonwealth had sufficient knowledge of both the alleged injury and the identity of the alleged tortfeasors in 2007 when it filed its initial complaint against gasoline ...

A district court granted EPA's motion to amend a consent decree requiring it to adopt numeric criteria for Florida's waters unless the state does so first. Florida adopted new nutrient criteria, but for some waters, the criteria are not numeric. EPA then sought to modify the consent decree so that t...

The Fourth Circuit affirmed a lower court decision dismissing a widow's claim that a coal company committed fraud on the court and thereby deprived her husband, a coal miner, of nearly a decade of benefits under the Black Lung Benefits Act (BLBA). Because the coal company had admitted liability for ...

The Fifth Circuit upheld the dismissal of a landowner's suit against a chemical company for damages stemming from natural gas well operations. The company operated the well in the late 1960s and early 1970s under a mineral lease that expired in 1975. The lease granted the landowners the right to sue...