The court holds that the U.S. government is not liable as an operator under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) for hazardous waste cleanup costs at an abandoned mine site. The court first holds that CERCLA clearly exposes the federal government to suit...
The court holds that the discretionary function exception to the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA) bars landowners' claims that the military's disposal of wastewater at the Walker Air Force Base near Roswell. New Mexico, contaminated their residential wells with trichloroethylene (TCE). The court first...
In the fall of 1993, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, in its opinion in In re Bell Petroleum Services, Inc., articulated its standard for determining joint and several liability under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980 (CERCLA). In so doing, it joined the ranks of four other circuit courts that have spoken on this issue.
One of the most prominent issues in the Congressional debate over reauthorization of the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA or Superfund) has been how to reduce "transaction costs" while at the same time fairly and expeditiously resolving liability disputes. This Dialogue asks: Would the allocation procedures proposed in last year's Superfund reauthorization bills meet those sometimes conflicting goals?
On February 4, 1994, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit vacated the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA's) April 1992 lender liability rule, which delineated the scope of the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act's (CERCLA's) secured creditor exemption. The court held in Kelley v. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency that the regulation could not stand as a substantive or legislative rule because Congress, through CERCLA, gave courts and not EPA the authority to interpret questions of liability.
In an 8-to-1 decision authored by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit's decision that the South Florida Water Management District's (District's) operation of a pumping station required a national pollutant discharge elimination system (NPDES) permit because pollutants transferred from a canal to a water conservation area would not have occurred but for the operation of the pump.
One of the most fundamental tenets of toxicology is that "the dose determines the poison." This simple phrase provides the basis for the belief that all agents—chemicals and physical phenomena that are capable of producing some effect—have the potential to cause toxicity. Whether toxicity actually occurs is principally a matter of dose: the greater the exposure to a given agent, the more pronounced or severe the response of a cell or organism.
In recent years, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has expanded its programs to assist governments around the world in building their capacity to protect the environment. This effort serves policies embodied in a variety of treaties, appropriations, and other legislative and executive decisions. A small but important part of this work is the effort to help other countries develop an effective legal framework for environmental protection.
The court holds that a potentially responsible party (PRP) must pay 1 percent of the past and future response costs incurred during the cleanup of a contaminated site in Salt Lake City, Utah, by a committee of PRPs under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERC...
The court holds that a defendant-operator company and a defendant-transporter company are liable under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) for costs incurred in cleaning up the MIG/De Wane Superfund site in Illinois, and orders them each to pay over $2 ...