The Ninth Circuit held unripe nonprofit groups' action to obtain a declaration that a U.S. Department of Energy order that outlines the management of defense radioactive waste is invalid. Delayed review will not cause any real cognizable hardship, but intervention at this point would unduly interfer...

The First Circuit upheld the dismissal of an oil company's lawsuit seeking to enjoin the Puerto Rico Environmental Quality Board from imposing a fine against it for releasing fuel from a leaking underground storage tank system into the environment. Because the proceedings are ongoing before the boar...

The Federal Circuit affirms a lower court decision finding property owners' takings claim against the National Marine Fisheries Service unripe. The owners sought to harvest redwood trees on their property. After learning that the cost of an incidental take permit (ITP) under the Endangered Species A...

The Federal Circuit reversed a lower court decision that the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act (SMCRA) produced a physical taking of a company's mineral rights. In 1937, the company sold the surface rights of land in the Daniel Boone National Forest to the United States but it retained the ...

The Tenth Circuit dismissed intervenors' appeal of a district court order approving a settlement in a suit originally filed to halt a wilderness inventory to assess whether several million acres in Utah meet criteria for wilderness eligibility. On April 14, 2003, the district court granted the plain...

A district court dismissed property owners' takings, substantive due process, and equal protection claims against a city after the city denied the owners' request for building permits. The owners' takings claim was dismissed for lack of subject matter jurisdiction. The owners did not adequately seek...

The court holds that a nuclear facility employee's state suit for damages based on personal injury allegedly caused by exposure to unsafe dosages of radiation was constitutionally removed to federal court under the Price-Anderson Amendments Act (PAAA), and that retroactive application of the PAAA di...

The court dissolves a 1992 injunction that prevented the U.S. Forest Service (Forest Service) from auctioning or awarding timber sales to log suitable habitat for the northern spotted owl in Regions 5 and 6 until the Forest Service implemented revised standards and guidelines in compliance with the ...

The court declines to exercise supplemental jurisdiction over state-law claims in an action brought by a municipal owner of a contaminated landfill asserting two Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) claims and nine state-law claims against waste depositors t...

The court holds that the primary jurisdiction doctrine requires it to stay a landowner's claims for injunctive relief against the owner of a railroad tie treatment site for polluting the landowner's groundwater and that the landowner established material facts precluding summary judgment on its stat...