The Tenth Circuit reversed a lower court decision dismissing a number of qui tam suits filed against natural gas pipeline companies and their affiliates for alleged underpayment of royalties in violation of the False Claims Act. The individual relator who filed the suits alleged that the companies u...

A California appellate court upheld a California coastal development permit allowing homeowners to build a second story to their home in Redondo Beach. A petitioner sought to have the permit vacated, arguing that the addition would block the public's view of the ocean in violation of the state Coast...

A district court remanded a portion of FWS' 2008 biological opinion that approved the Bureau of Reclamation's selected operating system for a dam along the Colorado River. The 2008 opinion replaces the FWS' 1994 opinion in which it that found that the selected operating system—modified low flu...

The Ninth Circuit held that an environmental group is not entitled to attorneys fees in their action challenging a USDA regulation that the agency withdrew while the case was pending. The group alleged that the USDA violated NEPA, the ESA, and the National Forest Management Act (NFMA) in promulgatin...

The Eighth Circuit, in a CWA enforcement action filed by the United States and the state of Missouri against a water district, affirmed a lower court decision denying the state's motion to dismiss the district's counterclaims and to strike its affirmative defenses claiming financial inability to com...

The U.S. Supreme Court held that a justice sitting on West Virginia's highest court should have recused himself from a case involving a coal company that contributed large sums of money toward the judge's election campaign. In that case, a jury found the company liable for fraudulent misrepresentati...

A California trial court held that a city's environmental impact report for a major expansion of an oil refinery in Richmond, California, violated the California Environmental Quality Act's new greenhouse gas requirements. Although the city identified a standard of no net increases in greenhouse gas...

A district court held that the pollution exclusion clause contained in a transport company's insurance policy does not cover bodily injuries stemming from the release of a naturally occurring gas. The case arose after dock workers were fatally asphyxiated due to argon leaking from one of the company...

The U.S Supreme Court held that a local ordinance that imposes a personal property tax on certain boats and vessels but contains exceptions that, in effect, largely limit its applicability to large oil tankers violates the U.S. Constitution's Tonnage Clause, Art. I, §10, cl. 3. The ordinance im...

An Arkansas appellate court struck down a state permit allowing an electric company to build a $1.6 billion coal-fired power plant near the state's southwest border with Texas. The state public service commission failed to require the company to address alternative locations in its permit applicatio...