Also known as: hazardous wastes · hazardous-waste · RCRA waste · toxic waste
Written by attorneys · grounded in primary & secondary sources — see below
A category of solid waste regulated under federal environmental statutes because it exhibits characteristics such as ignitability or reactivity or is listed as hazardous by regulatory authorities. RCRA establishes a cradle-to-grave tracking system and handling standards for such waste from generation through disposal.
Hammer Construction generates hazardous waste at its Ohio facility and ships it to a landfill in Indiana. Indiana charges Hammer a higher per-ton surcharge than it charges Indiana generators for identical waste. Hammer sues, claiming the differential violates the Dormant Commerce Clause.
Highland Steel operates coal mines whose subsidence threatens surface structures. State law requires backfilling to prevent hazardous waste-like contamination from exposed seams. Highland claims the requirement destroys the economic value of its mineral estates.
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Harmony Retail must send its hazardous waste to the county authority's designated facility under a local flow-control rule. The company argues the ordinance discriminates against out-of-county processors. The authority defends the rule as protecting public health and local infrastructure.
Hana Huang lives downstream from a treatment plant that repeatedly discharges hazardous waste into the river. She sues the operator for injunctive relief. The operator moves to dismiss, arguing that past violations have ceased and Huang lacks standing.
Haven Medical's subsidiary operated a hazardous waste disposal site that later requires Superfund cleanup. The government seeks to hold the parent directly liable for arranging disposal. The parent argues it never exercised day-to-day control over the subsidiary's operations.
Hiroshi Hasegawa belongs to an organization that monitors endangered species habitats threatened by hazardous waste runoff hundreds of miles away. He sues to enforce permit requirements. The agency moves to dismiss for lack of concrete, particularized injury.
An intentional tortfeasor who ordered illegal dumping of hazardous waste into an unlined pit cannot obtain contribution from a merely negligent joint tortfeasor even when both are jointly and severally liable for the same indivisible harm to residents.
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A company is directly liable when it negligently selects or retains an independent contractor known to have ignored spill procedures for transporting hazardous chemicals and the contractor's negligence causes injury to third parties.
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A land possessor owes a duty of reasonable care to child trespassers when it knows or has reason to know that children routinely enter the area containing highly dangerous artificial conditions such as leaking chemical drums.
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…cannot seriously be contended that a litigant's failure to use the precise or exact site where animals are slaughtered or where toxic waste is dumped into a river means he or she cannot show injury. The Court also rejects respondents' claim of vocational or professional injury. The Court says that it is "beyond all reason"…