The D.C. Circuit held that Alaska may not block any efforts by the United States to take tribal land into trust within Alaskan state borders. In 1971, the United States settled land claims staked by descendants of Alaskan aboriginal tribes. DOI interpreted that settlement as barring it from taking l...

The Ninth Circuit held that Washington state's management of barrier culverts, which allow streams to flow underneath roads, violated various Native American treaties from the 1850s and ordered the state to correct them. The "Stevens Treaties" were entered into in 1854-1855 between Native American t...

A district court held that West Virginia law preempts a county's ban on wastewater disposal wells. The ordinance effectively outlaws horizontal drilling anywhere in the county. It establishes a general, countywide ban on all storage of wastewater except for temporary storage of wastewater at drillin...

The Sixth Circuit upheld a lower court decision sentencing an individual to 60 months in prison and ordered the individual and his co-defendants, jointly and severally, to pay $10,388,576.71 in restitution to EPA for asbestos NESHAPS violations. The individual and co-defendants formed a salvage comp...

A Pennsylvania court dismissed developers' lawsuit against environmental activists and township residents for alleged tortious interference with contract with respect to a series of oil and gas leases. In an underlying suit, the activists and residents had challenged permits as well as a local ordin...

The Texas Supreme Court held that the common-law "accommodation doctrine," which gives an oil-and-gas lessee an implied right to use the land as reasonably necessary to produce and remove the minerals as long as it exercises that right with due regard for the landowner's rights, also extends to grou...