The Second Edition of this casebook provides an integrated approach to private and public law responses to toxic insults to individuals and to the environment. The book explores: the ability of various legal theories to resolve toxic tort cases, the use of various branches of science to address the question of causation, the unique features of toxic tort remedies in the workplace, the role of public law, both in controlling risk and its interaction with private law, special damage issues that arise in toxic cases such as the right to medical monitoring, the insurance issues that arise in toxic tort cases, and the complex legal environment (bankruptcy, multidistrict litigation, class actions) in which toxic tort cases are often litigated. The casebook stands alone as an upper-level introduction to the ever-expanding role of toxic tort and environmental law regulation and litigation.

The EPA was established to enforce the environmental laws Congress enacted during the 1970s. Yet today lethal toxins still permeate our environment, causing widespread illness and even death. Toxic Loopholes investigates these laws, and the agency charged with their enforcement, to explain why they have failed to arrest the nation's rising environmental crime wave and clean up the country's land, air, and water. This book illustrates how weak laws, legal loopholes, and regulatory negligence harm everyday people struggling to clean up their communities. It demonstrates that our current system of environmental protection pacifies the public with a false sense of security, dampens environmental activism, and erects legal barricades and bureaucratic barriers to shield powerful polluters from the wrath of their victims. After examining the corrosive economic and political forces undermining environmental law making and enforcement, the final chapters assess the potential for real improvement and the possibility of building cooperative international agreements to confront the rising tide of ecological perils threatening the entire planet.

Trying a toxic tort case is very different from other high-stakes litigation. This practice-focused guide explores the specific and often unique elements that distinguish this type of litigation, including the differing theories of liability and damages and the key procedural and substantive defenses to toxic tort claims. Other topics include scientific and medical evidence and causation, case strategy, trial management, settlement considerations, and causation standards that apply in four regions of the country, reviewing the standards that apply in every state.

Environmental justice is a significant and dynamic contemporary development in environmental law. Rechtschaffen, Gauna and new coauthor O'Neill provide an accessible compilation of interdisciplinary materials for studying environmental justice, interspersed with extensive notes, questions, and a teacher's manual with practice exercises designed to facilitate classroom discussion. It integrates excerpts from empirical studies, cases, agency decisions, informal agency guidance, law reviews, and other academic literature, as well as community-generated documents. This second edition includes new chapters addressing climate change, international environmental justice, and a capstone case study. It also adds expanded coverage of risk and the public health, empirical environmental justice research, and environmental justice for American Indian peoples.

This casebook is designed to be used in upper level courses by law students with little or no prior familiarity with Environmental Law. It includes chapters on permitting, the philosophical underpinnings of the field, climate change, and the recently amended Toxic Substances Control Act, as well as traditional core topics in Environmental Law such as controlling air and water pollution. The book also contains numerous practice problems that introduce students to the everyday realities of environmental lawyering. A substantial Teacher's Manual provides model syllabi, detailed pedagogical suggestions, ready-to-use exams and quizzes, answers to all practice problems, and other useful materials.