The Ninth Circuit reversed a lower court decision dismissing the Navajo Nation's lawsuit against the National Park Service (NPS) that seeks immediate return of human remains and associated funerary objects taken from its reservation. Between 1931 and 1990, NPS removed 303 sets of human remains and a...

A district court dismissed a lawsuit brought by individual miners and various mining groups, associations, and businesses challenging an Oregon law that temporarily bans instream motorized mining to protect water quality and fish habitat. The law, with some exceptions, temporarily prohibits instream...

A Montana court vacated and remanded a water discharge permit that the state's environmental agency issued to a coal mine in southeastern Montana. The agency's decisions are arbitrary and not supported by the law, and when viewed in its totality, the record demonstrates clear errors of judgment with...

A district court held on motions for summary judgment that a hazardous waste management company should be held liable under CERCLA for PCE contamination, but that material issues of disputed fact preclude a finding that an employee should be liable as an "operator." The testimony of the company's ex...

The Ninth Circuit held that the public disclosure bar of the False Claims Act did not bar an individual's qui tam lawsuit against his employer under the Act. The employer, an engineering company, entered into a contract with NOAA to design and build a Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS...