It's not too often that a federal judge declares that five of the judges on her own bench were wrong about a point of law in a string of decisions spanning a decade.
What's even rarer is when that lone judge learns, just days after she sticks her neck out, that she was right to do so -- due to the coincidence of an appellate court decision in an unrelated case that tackles the same legal question.
Both decisions are sure to grab the attention of environmental lawyers because they clarify the rules courts should use in deciding when a corporation may be held liable under the Superfund law on a theory of "successor liability."
Details here from The Legal Intelligencer via Law.com. Here's the 3rd Circuit opinion discussed in the article: United States v. General Battery Corp. Inc.