News
[02/03]
Pet elk denied re-entry to Pennsylvania from W.Va.
[02/03]
Stores busy as Colo. prepares for major snowstorm
[01/31]
Reward for info about dead Puget Sound sea lions
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Articles
Nuisance Actions
Nuisance law is based on the idea that a landowner can be held legally responsible for damage caused to the public or another landowner by the unreasonable use of his land. The damage to the injured party had to be substantial, continuing, and long lasting, before he was entitled to relief. The two forms of relief granted were either monetary damages or an injunction to stop the unreasonable use. Some examples of old common law nuisances were keeping a brothel and discharge of wastewater onto another's land. Today, there are a myriad of laws and regulations to handle many of the old common law nuisance situations, as well as defining new types of nuisances such as light pollution and abandoned swimming pools.
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Real Estate Transactions
Real estate law involves the purchase and sale of land for business or residential properties. The reason that commercial and residential real estate are generally considered to be separate areas of legal practice lies with the different and often highly specific needs of the two different types of purchasers. In commercial transactions, it is not enough merely to obtain clear title to the property; the commercial buyer usually has a specific business use in mind and must make certain that the property in question is suitable not only in terms of size and location, but also with regard to environmental concerns, zoning and other land use-regulations, the adaptability of any buildings on the land to the proposed use, and often the property's ability to generate income. These issues are of lesser relevance in residential real estate transactions.
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Case Summaries
[02/03]
Pacific Rivers Council v. US Forest Service
In a suit challenging Forest Service amendments to the Sierra Nevada Forest Plan as inconsistent with the National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA) and the Administrative Procedure Act, the district court's grant of summary judgment to the Forest Service is: 1) reversed in part, where the plaintiff had Article III standing, and the failure of the environmental impact statement (EIS) to provide any analysis of the environmental consequences on individual fish species was a failure to comply with the hard look requirement of NEPA; and 2) affirmed in part, insofar as the Forest Service did take a hard look at environmental consequences on amphibians in the EIS, in compliance with NEPA.
[01/26]
Chevron Corp. v. Naranjo
In a case in which a potential judgment-debtor sought a global anti-enforcement injunction against defendants from the Lago Agrio region of the Ecuadorian Amazon, prohibiting them from attempting to enforce an allegedly fraudulent judgment entered by an Ecuadorian court, the district court's grant of the injunction is reversed with orders to dismiss the claim, where the district court erred in construing New York’s Uniform Foreign Country Money-Judgments Recognition Act to grant the putative judgment-debtors a cause of action to challenge foreign judgments before enforcement of those judgments was sought.
[01/20]
Sierra Club v. EPA
On petition brought by several environmental groups for review of the Environmental Protection Agency’s approval of the 2004 State Implementation Plan (SIP) for the San Joaquin Valley’s nonattainment area for the one-hour ozone National Ambient Air Quality Standard, the petition is granted with remand where the agency’s action in approving the challenged SIP in 2010 based on data current only as of 2004 was arbitrary and capricious under the Administrative Procedures Act.
[01/20]
Center for Sierra Nevada Conservation v. County of El Dorado
In a case arising from the County of El Dorado's adoption of an oak woodland management plan and mitigation fee program without an environmental impact report (EIR), the district court's judgment in favor of the county is reversed, where: 1) the county could not rely on an earlier program EIR for its conclusion that the adoption of the plan and fee program would have no greater adverse environmental effect than that already anticipated in the program EIR, and its adoption of a negative declaration; and 2) the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) required a tiered EIR to be conducted prior to the county's adoption of the plan and fee program.
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