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 Rhode Island Supreme Court reversed a jury verdict finding three lead paint producers liable for creating a public nuisance. The state has not and cannot allege any set of facts to support its public nuisance claim that would establish that defendants interfered with a public right or that defen...

A district court held that an oil company's claims against its insurer for the costs of cleaning up and redeveloping a parcel of land on the shore of the Sakonnet River in Rhode Island under a 1992 consent agreement are not time barred. Depending on whether Massachusetts or Rhode Island law applies,...

A New York court held that the state environmental agency arbitrarily and capriciously denied a developer's application to include in the state brownfield cleanup program certain parcels of contaminated land that it plans to convert into a mega-mall and resort center. Admission into the program give...

The Indiana Supreme Court held that landowners who incurred costs remediating contamination from leaking underground storage tanks may go forward with their state-law contribution claim against the prior owners under the Indiana Underground Storage Tanks Act. The 10-year statute of limitations does ...

A Georgia court vacated a state air pollution permit allowing an energy company to construct and operate a 1,200 megawatt coal-fired power plant. Because there was no effort to identify, evaluate, or apply available technologies that would control carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, and because the perm...

The Ninth Circuit affirmed an individual's 10-year sentence for starting nine wildland fires on National Forest Service land. The lower court did not err in calculating the advisory sentencing guidelines range when it included fire suppression costs in the loss calculation, thereby resulting in an e...

A California appellate court held that while the State Aeronautics Act does not compel a county to allow continued operation of an airport, its closure constitutes a "project" under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). The State Aeronautics Act focuses on safety standards and the control...

A district court held that under Oregon law, a pollution exclusion clause bars coverage for unintended water contamination stemming from a company's intentional discharge of thorium into a city sewer system. The company thought that natural forces would dissipate the waste rendering it harmless. The...