A district court dismissed an insurance company's CERCLA claim against a tree nursery to recover response costs incurred by firefighters responding to a fire. The fire involved chlorine, a hazardous substance, and the company asserted that its insureds--two fire companies—"removed" and "remediated...
The Eleventh Circuit held that parties subject to a consent decree may not file claims for cost recovery under §107(a) of CERCLA and that their remedies are limited to filing claims for contribution under CERCLA §113(f). If a party subject to a consent decree could simply repackage its §113(f...
The Ninth Circuit upheld a consent decree vacating a portion of a National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) regulation increasing the limit on incidental interactions between longline fishing boats and loggerhead turtles and reducing the incidental take limits back to preexisting 2004 levels. The con...
The D.C. Circuit upheld a lower court decision dismissing an environmental group's action challenging FWS' and the National Park Service's plan for managing elk and bison populations in the National Elk Refuge and Grand Teton National Park. Part of this plan includes ending the longstanding agen...
A district court dismissed an oil refiner's CERCLA action against a recycling company for costs it incurred responding to PCB contamination allegedly resulting from used oil that was delivered from the company's facility to the refinery. The claim fails because there has been no release or thre...
A district court, in a 116-page opinion, upheld the FWS' final rule listing the polar bear as a threatened species under the ESA. The FWS' decision to list the bear represents a reasoned exercise of the agency's discretion based on the facts and the best available science as of 2008 when the ag...
A district court held that under a 1997 consent decree resolving CWA, RCRA, and state-law violations at a steel mill, the current owner is not liable for remediating any discharges that occurred prior to its purchase of the mill out of the previous owner's bankruptcy, but that it must conduct a site...
The Ninth Circuit affirmed a lower court decision denying an environmental group's request to enjoin the implementation of a statute, §1713 of the 2011 Appropriations Act, that orders the Secretary of the Interior to remove a portion of a distinct population of gray wolves from the protections ...