The California Supreme Court reversed a lower court decision that a developer's proposal to demolish an existing home and build a 10,000 square-foot single-family home on the lot may not be categorically exempt from environmental review under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). After th...

The Ninth Circuit upheld the dismissal of a trucking association's federal preemption challenge to a California environmental regulation on diesel trucks. The regulation requires heavy-duty diesel trucks, whose emissions contribute significantly to particulate matter and ozone pollution, to be upgra...

A California appellate court ordered the dismissal of an environmental group's California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) lawsuit against a city in connection with emergency storm drain repair and revegetation projects. Following a storm drain failure in 2009 that caused significant erosion along a...

A district court dismissed a flood protection board's lawsuit against 88 oil and gas companies for damages stemming from coastal erosion along a "buffer zone" in southeast Louisiana. The companies do not owe a legal duty to the board, arising under either Louisiana law or the Rivers and Harbors Act,...

The Texas Supreme Court reinstated a jury verdict in favor of a waste disposal facility in a trespass case filed against it by a neighboring rice farm. At trial, the farm argued that deep subsurface wastewater from the facility trespassed beneath its property, but the jury returned a verdict in the ...

A Wisconsin court remanded to the state utility commission two components of a 2013 order involving the state's distributed generation tariff for customer-owned generation, i.e., net metering customers. The tariff applies to customers who self-generate energy and compensates them for energy injected...