A district court held that an aerospace and technology company is not entitled to insurance coverage by "operation of law" for certain environmental liabilities under CERCLA on policies issued by an insurance company to the prior owner of the contaminated site at issue. The company's operati...

A district court dismissed a CERCLA §107 claim brought by a group of real estate developers who purchased contaminated property from a manufacturing company in 1986. Prior to purchasing the property, the group hired an environmental consultant who performed a cursory environmental audit. Th...

A district court held that the U.S. Forest Service's travel management plan for the Salmon-Challis National Forest violates NEPA. Environmental groups argued that the travel plan fails to ensure that motor vehicle use is properly sited and managed on the Forest in order to minimize adverse environme...

A district court upheld the FWS' biological opinion and the U.S. Forest Service's EIS and record of decision for the Idaho Roadless Rule. The court therefore denied environmental groups' request to enjoin the rule and replace it with the nationwide roadless rule that was enacted in 2001. The...

The Ninth Circuit vacated and remanded DOE's energy transmission congestion study and national interest electric transmission (NIET) corridor designations prepared under the Energy Policy Act of 2005 (EPAct). The EPAct added §216 to the Federal Power Act, requiring DOE to prepare the conges...

A district court held that CERCLA's statute of limitations does not bar the United States from recovering certain costs it incurred in 1993 and 1995 responding to soil and ground water contamination at the Fletcher Paint Works and Storage Facility Superfund site in Milford, New Hampshire. Af...

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...

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...

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 (...