On June 26, 2024, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a 2022 ruling from the District Court of Oregon, preventing Scott Timber Co. from clearcutting old-growth forest within Oregon’s Elliott State Forest. The court found that logging the 355-acre Benson Ridge parcel by Scott Timber Co., a subsidiary of Roseburg Forest Products, would harm…
We were lead counsel representing the nation’s largest organization of independent cattle producers, R-CALF USA, and the Cattle Producers of Washington, in a suit against the U.S. Department of Agriculture, alleging that USDA regulations enacted in 2016 that allow beef and pork to be classified as “domestic products” even when those meat products are slaughtered…
Public Justice’s Leslie Brueckner is co-lead counsel in this California Supreme Court appeal that concerned an issue of enormous importance to consumers and tort victims throughout the State: whether the “economic-loss rule” precludes recovery of purely economic damages arising out one of the most serious environmental disasters in California (if not U.S.) history. The appeal…
N&M Dairy was a multi-thousand cow dairy that the dumped millions of gallons of waste produced annually in surrounding open fields and earthen lagoons. The government and N&M Dairy consultants themselves warned N&M that its actions were killing crops and poisoning groundwater. Toxic nitrates seeped into nearby drinking water, and large volumes of toxic waste…
We are lead counsel on behalf of a coalition of public interest groups in a constitutional challenge to North Carolina’s “Anti-Sunshine” law—a statute that, like Ag-Gag laws, allows employers and property owners to sue undercover investigators who wish to blow the whistle on unethical or illegal activities in the workplace. Under the law, organizations and…
We are lead counsel on behalf of the nation’s largest organization of independent cattle producers, R-CALF USA, in a suit raising a First Amendment challenge to the administration of the beef checkoff in Montana. We are arguing that although the federal government mandates all ranchers pay a $1 tax on each head of cattle to promote…
We represent a mass action of poultry growers in Western Kentucky who raise poultry for Tyson, the nation’s largest poultry company. Tyson acts as an “integrator,” controlling all of the inputs used by its poultry growers—such as the birds, feed, and medical care—as well as the processing facilities and contracts for sale. Our clients, like…
This case is a federal constitutional challenge to two newly enacted Wyoming statutes (the “Data Laws”) that are designed to prevent the public from gathering “resource data” on public or private “open land” in the State of Wyoming. See W.S. 6-3-414 (criminal statute) and W.S. 40-26-1-1 (civil statute). These laws are close cousin to the…