TAG

Environmental liability

Contamination and natural-resource exposure on land.

PROP-05 · 01

Environmental Liability in Property Transfers: CERCLA and the Defences

9 MIN · PROP

Buying contaminated land can make the buyer liable for cleanup it did nothing to cause. This brief sets out how that happens, which federal defences exist, and what each one costs to keep.

CERCLA liability is strict, joint and several, and retroactive: a current owner can be held responsible for contamination caused entirely by someone else, decades earlier.
The bona fide prospective purchaser, innocent landowner, and contiguous property owner defences all require All Appropriate Inquiries completed before acquisition — never afterwards.
Each defence carries continuing obligations after closing. Ignoring land-use restrictions or refusing site access can forfeit a status that was validly earned at purchase.

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PROP-06 · 02

Water Rights and Drainage Disputes Between Neighbouring Owners

8 MIN · PROP

Two different fights hide under the word water: who may use it, and who must accept it when it runs downhill. The governing rule is state law, and it changes at the state line.

Most western states allocate water by prior appropriation — first in time, first in right, conditioned on continued beneficial use — while most eastern states apply riparian doctrine.
Groundwater runs on its own doctrines, which include rule of capture, reasonable use, correlative rights, and appropriation, and often differ from the surface rule in the same state.
Unwanted surface drainage follows one of three rules: common enemy, civil law, or reasonable use, and many states apply a modified version of whichever they nominally follow.

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