Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization v. Wheeler
A district court granted nonprofit groups' motion for summary judgment in a challenge to EPA's denial of their petitions to initiate TSCA rulemaking to expand its information-gathering process regarding asbestos-related health risks. The groups argued that EPA's denial of their petitions was arbitra...
United States v. Sterling Centrecorp Inc.
The Ninth Circuit affirmed a lower court ruling in a lawsuit concerning the U.S. government's and California's recovery of cleanup costs from a hazardous waste spill in the Sierra Nevada foothills that released toxic amounts of arsenic into local groundwater. Plaintiffs sued the company that had acq...
United States v. United Park City Mines Co.
The Tenth Circuit upheld a lower court ruling ordering mining and finance companies to comply with EPA's requests for information related to cleanup of a contaminated site in Utah. The companies argued that EPA exceeded its authority under CERCLA when it issued the information requests, the requests...
New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection v. American Thermoplastics Corp.
The Third Circuit held that a PRP's settlement with New Jersey resolving its state-law liability in connection with contamination at a municipal landfill did not protect the party from lawsuits seeking contribution toward expenditures made by EPA on the same site. The district court had concluded th...
Meritor, Inc. v. Environmental Protection Agency
The D.C. Circuit upheld EPA's 2018 decision to add a wheel-covering facility in Mississippi to the NPL. The company that assumed environmental liabilities for the facility argued that EPA improperly applied the hazard ranking system regulations to the site by failing to account for the company's mit...
Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc. v. United States Environmental Protection Agency
The Second Circuit granted in part and denied in part a challenge to provisions of EPA's Mercury Reporting Rule that exempted certain manufacturers of mercury or mercury-added products from reporting requirements. An environmental group and the state of Vermont argued that three provisions of the ru...
PPG Industries Inc. v. United States
The Third Circuit affirmed a district court ruling that the U.S. government was not liable to a coatings company for cleanup costs at a chromite ore processing plant with which it was involved during World War I and World War II. The district court concluded the government was not subject to operato...
Atlantic Richfield Co. v. Christian
The U.S. Supreme Court affirmed in part and vacated in part the Montana high court's ruling in a lawsuit concerning cleanup actions across a 300-square-mile Superfund site in Butte. Landowners whose properties are located within the site brought trespass, nuisance, and strict liability claims under ...