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Abstract:
Environmental common law litigation has reemerged in recent years as a powerful second pathway alongside statutory avenues for practitioners, communities, and governments to seek redress for environmental wrongs. Through a series of case studies written by practitioners, this book illustrates the possibilities of creatively using common law approaches to address a range of pressing environmental problems.

The book first provides an overview of the major common law remedies and describes the limits of using existing statutory remedies under environmental citizen suit provisions. This overview is followed by a number of case studies profiling how common law theories have been applied or can be applied to protect environmental resources, including cutting-edge successful product liability actions against the manufacturers of PERC and MTBE for groundwater contamination; innovative public nuisance actions filed by public entities against the lead paint industry; creative administrative nuisance litigation to shut down a concrete-crushing facility; public nuisance actions against car manufacturers and large power producers because of their greenhouse gas emissions; actions under the public trust doctrine to restore water resources for Native Hawaiians and to protect wildlife; and common law theories for limiting harms from concentrated animal feeding operations. Contributing authors include Joseph Sax, William Rodgers, Michael Axline, Matthew Pawa, Ken Alex, Richard Drury, Victor Sher, Duane Miller, D. Kapua'ala Sproat, Isaac Moriwake, Andrew Hanson, Katie Zoglin, Jan Stevens and Tara Mueller.

environment, common law