By James S. Diskint | Published January 11, 2016 | Posted in Environmental & Natural Resources, Environmental Issues | Leave a comment
In State of New Jersey, Department of Environmental Protection v. City of Margate, Docket No. ATL-L-2295-15 (Law Div.), the Atlantic County Superior Court ruled, among other things, that the municipal defendant (“Margate”) made a sufficient showing of arbitrariness to warrant a hearing on the issue of whether the condemnation action brought by the plaintiff, the Read More
Read MoreIn a much anticipated decision that came down on Tuesday, December 22, 2015, the Appellate Division of the Superior Court of New Jersey found that the 2012 beach access rules constructed by the Christie Administrative were invalid. The three-judge panel declared the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (“DEP”) was not authorized to promulgate the Read More
Read MoreIn Morristown Assoc. v. Grant Oil Co., Docket No. A-0313-11T3 (App. Div. Nov. 17, 2015), the Appellate Division returned to a matter concerning the New Jersey Spill Compensation and Control Act (“Spill Act”). Morristown Associates, the plaintiff, sought contribution from potentially responsible parties (“PRPs”) for costs associated with the cleanup and removal of fuel oil Read More
Read MoreNew Jersey Makes a Splash by Winning Two Tidelands Cases In Lisowski v. Borough of Avalon (2015), the Superior Court of New Jersey considered two consolidated appeals, Lisowski v. Borough of Avalon and State of New Jersey, Department of Environmental Protection v. Township of Delanco, each challenging the timeliness of the State of New Jersey’s Read More
Read MoreOn August 6, 2015, the New Jersey Supreme Court decided Ross v. Lowitz,Nos. A-101 September Term 2013, 074200. The Court’s opinion sheds some light on the state of New Jersey nuisance and trespass law. Yet it also raises some important questions about what a Plaintiff alleging environmental contamination and seeking tort damages must prove in Read More
Read MoreJudge Hogan has tried and overseen many environmental cases and that fact was evident in the over 80 page decision that he wrote last week upholding the frequently maligned $225 million settlement between the state DEP and the oil giant. While many people argued the state should have gotten more, largely because the state itself Read More
Read MoreThe Supreme Court in Griepenburg v. Ocean Township, 220 N.J. 239 (2015), considered the circumstances under which municipal zoning ordinances represent a legitimate exercise of a municipality’s power to zone property consistent with its Master Plan and the Municipal Land Use Law (“MLUL”) goals. In the late 1990s, Ocean Township, which is bordered by the Read More
Read MoreFamily Seeks to Preserve Pinelands, Property A Township of Medford family filed suit on February 23, 2015 in the Burlington County Superior Court, alleging their neighbors engaged in the improper clearcutting of 11,000 square feet of native vegetation and trees in the protected Pinelands area of New Jersey. According to the lawsuit, filed by Plaintiffs Read More
Read MoreWhat does a governing body do when a municipality’s planning board recommends changes to its master plan? Does the council have to adopt the changes to the municipal ordinance? Can the council reject the recommendations? Or can it simply ignore the planning board altogether? On January 16, 2015, the Appellate Division’s opinion in in Myers Read More
Read MoreThe New Jersey Legislature is considering a bill (S-570) which would result in companies paying more to develop building on public land. The bill proposes that proposed projects on preserved land in the state would be assessed for how much revenue that project would generate. The proposal is intended to help balance the value to Read More
Read More