United States Ninth Circuit

The district court's order approving consent decrees in an action under the Comprehensive Environmental Response Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA) is: 1) affirmed in part, where a district court has an obligation to independently scrutinize the terms of CERCLA consent decrees, and the district court properly declined to issue declaratory relief regarding intervening parties' future CERCLA liability because the intervenors did not request such relief in their complaints; but 2) vacated in part and remanded, where the district court erred in entering the parties' proposed CERCLA consent decrees, because the court failed to independently scrutinize the terms of the agreements, and in so doing, afforded undue deference to the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality.

Appellate Information

• Decided 08/01/2014
• Published 08/01/2014

Judges

• SMITH

Court

• United States Ninth Circuit

Counsel