Today, in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, Drakes Bay Oyster Company presents its case for enjoining the Secretary of the Interior and the National Park Service from destroying its business before its legal claims can even be heard in … Continue reading
As I am wont to say, things are what they are, and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals agrees: even a ‘public interest pirate’ is still just a pirate. Judicial opinions are usually pretty stuffy affairs, full of long complex … Continue reading
and the water in them is water. While these tautologies rest on the identity principle, words are not always what they seem when the EPA and the NRDC get hold of them. Two recent federal court decisions on the scope of … Continue reading
The Ninth Circuit quietly but firmly slapped down a San Francisco ordinance that would require cell phone stores to distribute a “fact sheet” to customers, requiring the disclosure of an alarmist and misleading message about the safety of cell phones, … Continue reading
A petition for a writ of certiorari has been filed in the Supreme Court challenging the Ninth Circuit decision that the receipt of a notice of intent to mine from a private party is an “agency action” triggering a duty … Continue reading
This morning the Ninth Circuit heard argument in the consolidated Delta smelt appeals. At issue was Judge Oliver Wanger’s decision overturning the 2008 Delta smelt biological opinion, authored by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The appeals raise extremely complex … Continue reading
Largely lost in the hullaballoo yesterday, the Supreme Court dismissed First American v. Edwards as “improvidently granted.” It did not give any reasons for the dismissal. This case asked whether a plaintiff who suffered no injury whatsoever from a defendant’s … Continue reading