A district court dismissed, on grounds of abstention, an environmental group's RCRA and CWA citizen suit against a company seeking remediation of contaminated sediments in the Raritan River located adjacent to a site formerly owned by the company. The complaint asks the court to enter an injunction ...

The Sixth Circuit dismissed as moot the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' (Corps') appeal of an injunction requiring it to accept contaminated material dredged from a waterbody connected to the Detroit River. A settlement agreement between Michigan and the city of Detroit required the city to dredge and...

The Fifth Circuit, in a class action suit, reversed in part, vacated in part, and remanded for further proceedings a lower court decision dismissing landowners' Fifth Amendment takings claims arising from the conversion of a railroad right-of-way to a recreational trail traversing their land. The la...

The Federal Circuit upheld the dismissal of landowners' inverse condemnation suit against the federal government alleging that their property was contaminated by trichloroethylene (TCE) as the result of government actions at a U.S. Air Force base. The landowners failed to point to some evidence pres...

The Third Circuit reversed a district court judgment awarding compensation to property owners pursuant to the government’s taking of 6.45 acres of land in the Gettysburg National Military Park. The court impermissibly failed to apply the "unit rule" of valuation and, therefore, improperly deter...

The First Circuit held that neither the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) nor the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA) waive U.S. sovereign immunity in a property owner's suit to recover monetary damages for its cleanup of past oil contamination on a former U.S. Navy base. RCRA contains no exp...

The Court held that the "substantially advances" formula, announced in Agins v. City of Tiburon, 447 U.S. 255, 10 ELR 20361 (1980), is not an appropriate test for determining whether a government regulation effects a Fifth Amendment taking. The "substantially advances" formula prescribes an inquiry ...

The D.C. Circuit dismissed as moot the U.S. Department of the Interior's appeal of a district court order that remanded for further rulemaking and temporarily suspended the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) and the National Marine Fisheries Service's (NMFS) "no surprises rule." The government arg...

The U.S. Supreme Court held that a city's proposed disposition of property owners' property, in a plan designed to revitalize the city's ailing economy, qualifies as a "public use" within the meaning of the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. There is no allegation that a...

The court held that a district court erred in dismissing environmental groups' suit challenging the issuance of a permit to construct a power plant near Yellowstone National Park for lack of standing. The Montana Department of Environmental Quality issued the permit after the U.S. Department of the ...