The Supreme Court of Alabama reversed and remanded a lower court decision dismissing a coastal property owner's lawsuit against an oil company for alleged trespassing and property damage stemming from the company's response actions following the Deepwater Horizon disaster in 2010. After the spill, h...

A district court held that environmental and animal rights groups may challenge the constitutionality of two trespass statutes passed by the Wyoming legislature in 2015. Under the statutes—one imposing criminal liability and the other imposing civil—a person will be held liable if he or she: (1)...

The U.S. Supreme Court upheld FERC's "demand-response" rule under which operators of wholesale electricity markets, in specified circumstances, must pay the same price to providers for conserving energy as to generators for producing it. During peak periods, electricity rates increase dramatically, ...

A district court ordered NMFS to take a "hard look" at the environmental impacts of its definition of "fishery" with regard to the Atlantic Mackerel, Squid, and Butterfish fishery management plan (FMP) and whether river herring and shad should be included in the FMP. In 2014, the Mid-Atlantic Fisher...

A district court held that environmental groups lacked standing to challenge EPA's decision not to object to a draft water discharge permit that Arkansas' environmental agency issued to a pulp and paper company under the state's CWA NPDES permit program. The groups sought an order declaring that the...

A New Jersey appellate court, in an unpublished opinion, reversed and remanded portions of a lower court summary judgment against a corporation, its principal, and a general partnership for costs related to remediation of the site of a former thermometer manufacturing plant. The corporation and the ...

A district court dismissed homeowners' CERCLA, RCRA, and state-law claims against the former owners and operators of a manufacturing plant for alleged well-water contamination. The court dismissed the CERCLA claims because the homeowners failed to allege that they incurred any recoverable response c...

A district court, in a 126-page opinion, dismissed environmental groups' NEPA lawsuit against the Alabama Department of Transportation, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and the Federal Highway Administration in connection with a proposed six-lane, 50-mile highway project north of Birmingham, Alabam...

A district court ordered the state of Idaho to propose a plan to protect the Canada lynx, a threatened species, from being inadvertently captured or killed in northern Idaho due to traps set by trappers intending to lure other species. The state does not restrict how many traps or snares a licensed ...

The Ninth Circuit, in an unpublished opinion, held that environmental groups have standing to bring a RCRA citizen suit against the U.S. Forest Service for failing to regulate the disposal of spent lead ammunition in the Kaibab National Forest. The groups allege that the Forest Service's failure to ...