A California appellate court reversed a lower court decision denying a petition to set aside a regional water board order requiring a company to perform a human health risk assessment in connection with its cleanup of a large toxic groundwater plume of industrial wastes that leaked into the ground a...
A California appellate court held that a regional air quality district abused its discretion under the California Environmental Quality Act in issuing a negative declaration for an ultra low sulfur diesel fuel manufacturing project. The environmental group challenging the project offered substantial...
The First Circuit held that under Massachusetts law, an insurance company has no contractual obligation to defend or indemnify an individual in an environmental liability suit brought against him by his neighbors for soil contamination stemming from a leaking underground storage tank (UST). The tota...
A California appellate court upheld a lower court decision dismissing claims challenging a memorandum of understanding (MOU) entered into by a state agency and an environmental group to help implement the California Marine Life Protection Act. In enacting the statute, the state legislature failed to...
The Supreme Court of South Dakota upheld the state's approval of a permit to construct a coal-fired energy conversion facility. Certain nonprofit environmental organizations asserted that the carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from the plant would contribute to global warming, thereby posing a threat of...
A California appellate court held that the California Coastal Act of 1976 does not grant the California Coastal Commission the power to declare property an "environmentally sensitive habitat area" during the administrative appeal from a local government's grant of a coastal development permit. The C...
A California appellate court rejected a petition to invalidate a regional district's annexation of 144,000 acres of coastland. Although the public notice for a protest hearing failed to include a statement of reasons for the annexation, this was not prejudicial. Nor was any potential ambiguity in th...
The Tenth Circuit upheld the constitutionality of Colorado's Clean Indoor Air Act. The Act bans smoking in indoor areas, but it expressly exempts from this general prohibition "airport smoking concessions" such as airport restaurants and bars. A coalition of tavern and bar owners filed suit challeng...
A California appellate court upheld the California Coastal Commission's denial of a coastal development permit to build a home. The commission determined that the property contains an "environmentally sensitive habitat area" that had not been designated in the Los Angeles County land use plan and th...
A California appellate court reversed the denial of a petition challenging a city's approval of an application to demolish a building to make way for a larger parking lot. The city concluded that the building was not an historic resource and that the project was exempt from the California Environmen...