Law Commons^™

Environmental Law, Travis M. Trimble

Mercer Law Review

In 2022, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit held that a plaintiff and the organization to which she belonged had standing, based on her claimed injury to her aesthetic well-being, to bring a Clean Water Act (CWA) citizen suit against a developer who had allegedly filled a wetland in violation of its permit, even though the plaintiff had never visited the wetland and even though the wetland was on private property not accessible to the plaintiff. The United States District Court for the Northern District of Alabama concluded that acid mine leachate from a refuse pile …

Waiving Goodbye To Oil Spill Claims Against The United States: The Eleventh Circuit Creates A Narrow Exception To The Sovereign Immunity Waiver In The Suits In Admiralty Act Of 1920, Anika Akbar

Mercer Law Review

Costs related to oil spills can be extraordinary. Excluding the damage to the environment and to the vessel alone, a responsible party may incur containment costs, clean-up costs, cost of repairing public infrastructures, and fines and fees for causing the spill. Additionally, the owner of the spilling vessel also risks liability for lost profits to other businesses in the surrounding areas, including those that can no longer fish in the affected area. ...

On September 8, 2019, the M/V Savage Voyager (the Vessel) was pushing two tank barges laden with oil along the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway (the Waterway) when it approached …