Publications

CERCLA’s Defenses and Exemptions Based on Interactions With Other Federal Environmental Laws

3/26/2015 Articles

This is the second in a series of articles addressing defenses to, and exclusions from, natural resource damage claims asserted under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980. The first article, CERCLA’s Novel and Untested Defenses: Acts of God, Acts of War, Acts of Third Parties and Cultural Resource Damages (45 ER 2589, 9/5/14), focused on a few novel and relatively untested defenses. In this second installment of the article series, Paul P. (‘‘Skip’’) Spaulding III focuses on a trio of defenses and exemptions to natural resource damage claims that arise from the intersection of CERCLA and other federal environmental laws: the ‘‘irretrievable commitment of resources’’ defense, ‘‘federally permitted release’’ defense and CERCLA’s ‘‘petroleum exclusion’’ defense.

Link to article PDF.

Read the first article in the series, "CERCLA’s Novel and Untested Defenses: Acts of God, Acts of War, Acts of Third Parties and Cultural Resource Damages."

Resources