A district court held on motions for summary judgment that a hazardous waste management company should be held liable under CERCLA for PCE contamination, but that material issues of disputed fact preclude a finding that an employee should be liable as an "operator." The testimony of the company's ex...

A district court, on motions for summary judgment, dismissed all but one of a property owner's environmental, waste, and breach of lease claims against various manufacturing companies that leased the site. The owner has been leasing the property since 1972, but it has largely been an absentee landlo...

The Eighth Circuit, in an unpublished opinion, upheld the dismissal of an individual's RCRA lawsuit against a city for using road salt to melt snow and ice on a street located within a flood plain. Because the road salt was released into the environment as an expected consequence of its intended use...

A district court held that New York may seek response costs and natural resource damages under CERCLA in connection with a contaminated industrial site in Long Island, a portion of which was listed on the NPL in 2011. The state's past response actions at the site were consistent with the national co...

A district court dismissed a company's declaratory judgment action concerning its liability for cleanup costs that EPA incurred at the Hudson Oil Refinery Superfund site in Cushing, Oklahoma. The company owned and operated the site from 1943 to 1977, when it sold the refinery to the current owner. I...

A district court held that the owner of a contaminated property that was once the site of a paper mill may not seek response costs from a company that had purchased the assets of the prior owner of the mill. The owner argued that the company was liable under CERCLA under a de facto merger theory of ...

A district court dismissed a city's RCRA action against two power and gas companies concerning a methane gas leak from natural gas pipelines and waste oil contamination from a former manufacturing gas plant. Because methane gas does not meet the definition of "solid waste" under RCRA, the city canno...

A district court held that a 2014 settlement agreement between a spinoff company, the U.S. government, an energy company, and its parent bars over 4,300 individuals from bringing Pennsylvania tort claims arising from the operation of a wood treatment plant formerly owned and operated by the spinoff'...

A district court dismissed homeowners' CERCLA, RCRA, and state-law claims against the former owners and operators of a manufacturing plant for alleged well-water contamination. The court dismissed the CERCLA claims because the homeowners failed to allege that they incurred any recoverable response c...

The Ninth Circuit, in an unpublished opinion, held that environmental groups have standing to bring a RCRA citizen suit against the U.S. Forest Service for failing to regulate the disposal of spent lead ammunition in the Kaibab National Forest. The groups allege that the Forest Service's failure to ...