A district court issued a preliminary injunction enjoining plaintiffs from enforcing a multibillion dollar judgment awarded by an Ecuadorian court against an oil company for environmental pollution in the Amazon. The evidence establishes that the plaintiffs and their allies intend quickly to...

The Third Circuit, in a $113 billion lawsuit against an oil company concerning environmental pollution in the Amazon, affirmed in part and vacated in part a lower court order granting the oil company's application to engage in discovery for use in a proceeding before an Ecuadorian court unde...

The Ninth Circuit reversed a lower court decision dismissing a Peruvian Achuar indigenous group's lawsuit against an oil company for environmental contamination and the release of hazardous wastes. The complaint alleges that, during its 30 years in the Achuar territories, the oil company kno...

A California appellate court reversed a lower court decision denying a petition challenging the adequacy of a county's environmental analysis of a proposed surface mining operation on a 40-acre site in the foothills of the Southern Sierra Nevada mountain range. The county limited its environ...

A district court dismissed a motion to dismiss environmental groups' citizen suit against five coal companies alleging thousands of violations of the CWA and SMCRA in West Virginia. Because EPA entered into a consent decree with the companies, the defendants argued that the groups' CWA claim...

The Fifth Circuit held that a pollution exclusion clause contained in an oil well operator's insurance policy bars coverage for cleanup costs of an oil leak on leased land. The operator argued that the exclusion did not apply because the operator leased only mineral rights and that the surfa...

The Fifth Circuit held that a "farmout agreement," under which the owner of a federal offshore oil and gas lease transferred its rights to drill to another drilling operator, does not require the operator to bear a proportionate share of the costs of decommissioning an oil platform at the le...

The D.C. Circuit set aside an order of the Federal Mine Safety and Health Review Commission denying a mining company's application for temporary relief from restrictions that the Mine Safety and Health Administration imposed on it in conjunction with its investigation of an explosion at one of its m...

The Third Circuit reversed a lower court order granting an oil company's application to engage in discovery for use in an environmental class action before an Ecuadorian court under 28 U.S.C. §1782(a). The lower court ruled that the attorney-client privilege asserted by the Ecuadorian plaintif...

A district court dismissed a mining industry association's action challenging DOI Office of Hearings and Appeals (OHA) regulations allocating the burden of proof in five types of administrative proceedings under SMCRA. The association argued that the regulations impermissibly shift the ultimate...