The court affirms a district court ruling that the Coast Guard arbitrarily and capriciously approved a permit for a causeway to Sears Island, Maine, by treating it as a bridge governed by the General Bridge Act rather than subjecting it to the applicable and more stringent conditions of the Rivers a...

The court holds that citizen suits may be brought under §505 of the Federal Water Pollution Control Act only if the defendant is in violation of relevant effluent standards, limitations, or orders at the time the suit is filed. The court, following the Fifth Circuit's ruling in Hamker v. Diamond Sh...

The court holds that the state Hazardous Waste Management Commission's denial of a license to a hazardous waste transporter is not arbitrary and capricious. The Missouri hazardous waste control law applies to preenactment actions, and petitioner can be held responsible for its predecessors-in-intere...

The court rules that §3007(a) of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) authorizes the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to request information about a hazardous waste handler's preparation of responses to inquiries, transactions with its customers, and individual defendants' roles i...

The court issues a declaratory judgment that defendants are "taking" endangered wildlife in violation of §9 of the Endangered Species Act of 1973 by maintaining feral sheep and goat populations for sport hunting which are destroying the critical habitat of the Palila, an endangered bird, on the upp...

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals affirms a district court's judgment rejecting challenges on various grounds by nearby landowners to the location of F-15 jet aircraft at Luke Air Force Base in Arizona. Appellants have failed to show that the lower court erred in concluding that the Air Force's env...

The Supreme Court of California reverses a lower court's grant of summary judgment for plaintiffs in a suit by billboard owners challenging the constitutionality of a municipal ordinance with bans all off-site billboards and requires that existing billboards be removed after an amortization period. ...

The Ninth Circuit affirms an injunction against further bulldozing and blasting by locators of unpatented mining claims on national forest lands, on the ground that such activities are not "reasonably" related to prospecting or mining within the meaning of the Surface Resources Act (SRA). In additio...

The Supreme Court of Texas rejects plaintiff-respondents' claim for damages according to the traditional rule that a landowner has the right to withdraw groundwater without incurring liability for subsidence damage to neighboring lands absent willful waste or malicious injury. The court adds, howeve...

The Supreme Court of Oregon, holding that the public trustdoctrine does not prohibit all non-water related estuarine landfills and thus does not bar issuance of a permit to fill 32 acres of an estuary for a municipal airport runway extension, nevertheless affirms the lower court's reversal of the pe...