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 to environmental wrongs. Creative Common Law Strategies for Protecting the Environment vividly illustrates that environmental common law has never been more alive, and perhaps more needed for meeting complex environmental challenges, than it is today.

 

This book provides an overview of the major common law remedies, and describes the limits of using statutory remedies under environmental citizen suit provisions. The authors describe their experiences in bringing cutting-edge public nuisance actions against car manufacturers and large power producers because of their greenhouse gas emissions; successful products liability actions against the manufacturers of PERC and MTBE for groundwater contamination; path-breaking litigation filed by public entities against the lead paint industry; lawsuits under the public trust doctrine and other common law doctrines to protect water, fish, wildlife, and much more.