Natural Resources Defense Council v. New York State Department of Environmental Conservation
A New York trial court held that the state environmental agency's general permit for stormwater discharges from municipal separate storm sewer systems (MS4) violates the CWA and state law. By allowing discharges based on an applicant's notice of intent (NOI) to discharge, the permitting scheme c...
Chevron Corp. v. Naranjo
The Second Circuit vacated a preliminary injunction enjoining residents from the Lago Agrio region of the Ecuadorian Amazon from enforcing a multibillion dollar judgment awarded by an Ecuadorian court against an oil company for environmental pollution. Below, the court ruled that absent a preliminar...
Idaho Conservation League v. Atlanta Gold Corp.
A district court held that a mining company is liable for discharging arsenic and iron into a nearby creek in violation of its NPDES permit. The company did not deny or admit that it is in violation of its permit. Instead, it argued that the environmental group that filed suit against it lacked ...
Hearts Bluff Game Ranch, Inc. v. United States
The Federal Circuit affirmed a lower court decision dismissing a landowner's claim for just compensation under the Fifth Amendment for an alleged taking based on the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' denial of the landowner's proposal to operate a mitigation bank on its property. A mitigation bankin...
Shoshone Indian Tribe of the Wind River Reservation, Wyoming v. United States
The Federal Circuit vacated and remanded a lower court decision dismissing Native American tribes' claim that the government unlawfully converted oil and gas leases on a reservation from one type of lease to another. The lower court dismissed the claims on statute of limitations grounds. The tri...
Sierra Club v. California Parks & Recreation
A California appellate court upheld a lower court decision dismissing a petition to compel the state's parks and recreation department to ban off-highway vehicle recreation on certain leased portions of the Oceano Dunes State Vehicular Recreational Area. It is too late to review the 1982 coastal...
Chevron Corp. v. Donziger
A district court denied a corporation's motion to freeze the assets of Ecuadorian plaintiffs and to prevent them from collecting the proceeds of a multibillion dollar judgment in an underlying case involving environmental contamination in the Amazon rainforest. The corporation filed its motion f...