The Eighth Circuit affirmed a lower court's decision to abstain from an action seeking a declaration of the rights and obligations of various insurance companies and an oil company with respect to soil contamination surrounding the oil company's refinery in Hartford, Illinois. The lower court correc...

The Ninth Circuit dismissed individuals' appeal from a judgment for defendants in a case claiming that they violated the National Environmental Policy Act and the California Environmental Quality Act in adopting a National Park Service (NPS) program to restore and protect Santa Cruz Island by, in pa...

The D.C. Circuit held that a consumer group lacks standing to challenge a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) safety standard requiring a warning system for underinflated tires. The group alleged that some of its members will suffer car accidents in the future that otherwise would...

The D.C. Circuit held that a lower court improperly dismissed individuals' National Environmental Policy Act and National Historic Preservation Act claims against the Secretary of the Army and developers in connection with the closure and redevelopment of Fort Ritchie, a former U.S. Army base in wes...

The Ninth Circuit held that federal law preempts Washington State's Cleanup Priority Act, a statute enacted through the passage of a voter initiative. The Act was intended to "prevent the addition of new radioactive and hazardous waste" at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation site until cleanup of existi...

The Fifth Circuit dismissed as moot an environmental group's Clean Water Act (CWA) citizen suit against a city for violating its separate storm sewer system permit. The lower court dismissed the case on grounds that it was barred by res judicata. But because a consent decree in a prior U.S. Environm...

The Fifth Circuit upheld a lower court order giving an aluminum company more time to build a power plant than originally agreed to in a consent decree that resolved alleged Clean Air Act violations at the company's manufacturing plant. After the company failed to meet the decree's deadline for comme...

The Ninth Circuit held that Native American tribes lacked standing to enforce a consent decree entered into by a mining company and the federal government for Resource Conservation and Recovery Act violations at the company's phosphorous plant located on land within a tribal reservation. In addition...

The Ninth Circuit held that a Canadian corporation that markets and distributes electric power in the United States is a "foreign state" within the meaning of the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act of 1976 and, therefore, is entitled to a federal bench trial in a case alleging it had "manipulated the ...

A district court held that neither a coalition of agricultural water users nor a recreational water user has standing to challenge the state's striped bass fishing regulations under the Endangered Species Act. The plaintiffs argued that the regulations cause the unlawful take of species listed under...