The court holds that a district court properly denied an oil company's request for a new trial in a case concerning the company's petroleum pollution of a neighbor's property but that it erred in failing to award the neighbor prejudgment interest. At trial the jury returned a verdict finding that th...
The court reverses a district court's grant of summary judgment in favor of a petroleum company and the federal government in a suit filed against them for cleanup costs incurred by the current owner of a mobile home park, but affirms the district court's grant of summary judgment in favor of prior ...
The court affirms a U.S. Court of Federal Claims award of $1,153,578 to a Virginia county as compensation for 16.05 acres of land that the government took by eminent domain for use at the Manassas National Battlefield Park. A developer conveyed the 16.05 acres at issue to the county for use as a roa...
The court affirms the conviction of a hunter for possessing ducks in excess of the two-duck daily bag limit in violation of §703 of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act (MBTA). The hunter claimed that he only shot two ducks and that his dog, badly trained, retrieved the remaining ducks, which were shot by...
The court affirms a trial court summary judgment decision holding that the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA's) tobacco regulations did not effectuate a temporary regulatory taking of vending machine owners' property because the challenged regulations were never enforced. The regulations banned th...
The court affirms a district court's grant of summary judgment in favor of a wastewater treatment facility sued by landowners alleging that the facility allowed pollutants to be discharged onto their property in violation of the Clean Water Act. The landowners contended that because fecal coliform w...
The court holds that two U.S. Forest Service land transactions with a ski resort complied with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and the National Forest Management Act (NFMA). In one transaction, the Forest Service approved the construction of a large resort facility on a mountain owned b...
The court reverses in part and affirms in part its decision on the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) and Delaware Hazardous Substance Cleanup Act (HSCA) liability of three corporations for costs incurred in connection with an environmental contamination c...
The court first holds that deep-ripping, when undertaken in protected wetlands, can constitute a CWA §301(a) prohibited discharge of a pollutant into a wetland. Although deep-ripping redeposits materials originally present in the wetland, activities that destroy the ecology of a wetland are not imm...
The court upholds a district court decision that a previous owner of property is not liable under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) for any cleanup costs. The court first holds that the district court correctly found that there was no evidence that an...