Litigation

Happy Birthday, CERCLA!

Thirty years ago today, Congress enacted the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Clean-up and Liability Act (a/k/a CERCLA or Superfund).  CERCLA’s primary thrust is to create liability for cleanup of leaking waste disposal sites.  The statute was Congress’s response to a number of high profile incidents, including the Love Canal debacle, that increased public awareness of the …

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Full Speed Ahead!

The D.C. Circuit rejected efforts to stay EPA’s pending greenhouse gas regulations until the court decides the merits of the appeals.  It could well take a year or more for the merits to be decided, so in the meantime EPA can move forward. The court order does not indicate any view on the merits of …

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Cert in Connecticut v. AEP: Eight Comments

1)  Well, Obama got what he wanted.  And it’s a good thing, too: by attempting to short-circuit public nuisance suits, he established his good faith on climate change and paved the way for bipartisan cooperation. 2)  It is absurd to argue that a common-law tort claim runs afoul of the political question doctrine.  I’m not …

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U.S. Supreme Court to Hear Climate Change Nuisance Case

The 2010-2011 U.S. Supreme Court case promises to be a blockbuster one for environmental law.  The Court today announced that it had granted a petition for certiorari filed in AEP v. Connecticut (the lower court decision in the case is here).  The case, brought by  a number of states against the country’s five larges utilities , …

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Connecticut v. AEP Cert Decision Soon?

A reporter just called me for background on the climate change public nuisance case from the Second Circuit, Connecticut v. AEP.  She said, “As you probably know, the Supreme Court will announce on Monday whether it will take the case.” Um, no, actually: I didn’t know that.  The Supremes make their decisions throughout the year, …

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State AGs Ready to Attack Constitutionality of California’s AB 32

An important postscript to my earlier post regarding Berkeley Law’s/CLEE’s newly-published white paper on Proposition 23. That’s the California initiative measure that, if approved by voters this November, would suspend implementation of that state’s Global Warming Solutions Act, better known as AB 32. The San Francisco Chronicle reports today that the Attorneys General of Alabama, …

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Clean Ports Program Moves Ahead — A Little

A few days ago, District Judge Christina Snyder issued her 57-page ruling in American Trucking Ass’n v. City of Los Angeles, the trade association’s challenge to the city’s clean ports program.  The ruling gave the city a crucial victory, and it has more than local significance: if its reasoning is accepted, it could lead to …

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The SG Brief in Connecticut v. AEP: WORSE than you think

Okay, so it’s bad enough that the Obama Administration has decided to unilaterally disarm itself in the struggle against climate change.  For you law geeks out there (and you know who you are), the SG has gone even further to make these suits impossible in the future. It does this by arguing that the state attorneys …

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Obama Sides With the Polluters

This is pretty self-explanatory: The Obama administration has urged the Supreme Court to toss out an appeals court decision that would allow lawsuits against major emitters for their contributions to global warming, stunning environmentalists who see the case as a powerful prod on climate change. Read the whole thing.  It’s hard for me to tell …

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Ninth Circuit upholds steelhead listing

Salmonids present a challenge for Endangered Species Act implementation, because they aren’t neatly divided into completely separate reproductive units, the way we expect species to be. Conservation advocates have long argued that behavior should be as important in genetics in deciding which salmonid groups merit protection. The National Marine Fisheries Service and U.S. Fish and …

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