The Federal Circuit held that the U.S. government is not liable for flood damages that property owners in the New Orleans area incurred following Hurricane Katrina. The property owners filed suit under the Tucker Act, alleging that the government's construction and operation of the Mississippi River...

A Colorado court, on motions for summary judgment, held that state and federal law preempt portions of a city ordinance concerning the regulation of oil and gas development within its boundaries. The provisions for minimum setbacks prohibit what state regulations would allow. As such, they are preem...

The Eighth Circuit held that a lower court must hold a new trial with respect to a family's claims for punitive damages against a former manufacturing company for tricholorethylene contamination that allegedly caused their daughter to develop autoimmune hepatitis. The contamination occurred between ...

A district court held that FWS must comply with a FOIA request for information from its Law Enforcement Management Information System (LEMIS), which, among other things, the agency uses to track species being imported or exported; monitor quotas of a particular species; and intervene in illegal trad...

Pennsylvania's highest court held that the $10,000/day civil penalty under the Clean Streams Law does not apply to each day that pollutants leaked from an impoundment remain in the groundwater and then leach into other waters of the Commonwealth. The case arose after the state environmental agency a...

The D.C. Circuit held that EPA properly responded to a consultant's requests for information concerning the Agency's response to alleged scientific misconduct in tightening nitrogen requirements for the Great Bay Estuary in New Hampshire. EPA received two sets of FOIA requests, and the Agency provid...

A Pennsylvania appellate court held that a family may go forward with its lawsuit against a natural gas company for operating wells on adjacent property to extract natural gas from beneath the family's property via hydraulic fracturing. The family asserted claims for trespass and conversion and soug...

A district court upheld a surface coal mining permit issued to a company even though the cotenant objected to any mining on the property. The company cotenant conveyed the right to enter and surface mine coal to an affiliate, but the other cotenant did not consent to surface mining. Nevertheless, th...

A district court denied motions to dismiss environmental groups' lawsuit challenging Executive Order 13795, “Implementing an America-First Offshore Energy Strategy,” which reversed President Obama’s withdrawal of 128 million acres in the Arctic and Atlantic Oceans from future oil and gas leasi...

A district court granted California cities' motions to remand their climate change tort actions against oil and gas companies back to state court. Although their state law claims raise national and perhaps global questions, they should not have been removed to federal court. Removal based on federal...