On February 19, 2019, the Supreme Court of the United States issued an order granting review of the Ninth Circuit’s decision in County of Maui v. Hawaii Wildlife Fund, setting the stage for a landmark decision on Clean Water Act jurisdiction. The particular issue under consideration is whether the Clean Water Act requires a permit when pollutants originate from a point source but are conveyed to navigable waters by a nonpoint source, such as groundwater. In January, the U.S. Solicitor General filed a brief – at the Court’s request – urging the Justices to decide the question ...
Can you appeal a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' jurisdictional determination ("JD") that a water feature constitutes waters of the United States? The Administrative Procedures Act allows such an appeal if it is determined that no further action is available in court. However, the Corps has historically taken the position that its jurisdictional determination is not appealable and it is only when a permit is denied that one can challenge the jurisdictional determination. On December 11, 2015, the Supreme Court granted certiorari in United States Army Corps of Engineers v. Hawkes ...
A Lone Pine order is a case management tool often utilized by courts in complex multi-party toxic tort cases to organize plaintiffs' claims and to focus the parties on key issues early in the litigation. A Lone Pine order typically requires plaintiffs early in a case to present some basic evidence supporting his or her injuries and to produce some evidence of causation. Lone Pine orders take their name from a 1986 decision out of New Jersey, Lore v. Lone Pine Corp. In the Lone Pine litigation, multiple plaintiffs sued multiple defendants for personal injuries and property damages arising ...
The recent Supreme Court case Koontz vs. St. Johns River has generated a lot of commentary and debate in the legal community and speculation concerning the ramifications of the case on various land use permitting scenarios. Oversimplifying the facts and legal theories, the Supreme Court extended previous rulings to a situation whereby the governmental entity denied a request/permit for the failure of the applicant to agree to "suggested" alternative concessions proposed by the local government. The alternative concessions included mitigation measures, conservation ...