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CS wins injunction against the City of Houston

March 5, 2010

The 151st Civil Dis­trict Court in and for Har­ris County, Texas, (Judge Mike En­gel­hart) today gran­ted CES En­vir­on­ment­al Ser­vice's mo­tion for a tem­por­ary in­junc­tion against the City of Hou­s­ton.

CES and the City of Hou­s­ton entered in­to an agree­ment that they read in­to the re­cord in fed­er­al court in par­tial set­tle­ment of CES's pending con­sti­tu­tion­al claims against the City. The agree­ment re­quired the City of Hou­s­ton to is­sue no­tices of vi­ol­a­tion and to take steps to ter­min­ate CES's right to dis­charge wastewa­ter in­to the City's sew­er sys­tem only on the basis of find­ings by an in­de­pend­ent sampler and test­er, A & B Labs. The City vi­ol­ated this agree­ment by ter­min­at­ing CES's wastewa­ter ser­vice, and thereby shut­ting down CES's plant, based on its own test­ing res­ults rather than the A & B res­ults.

Judge En­gel­hart re­jec­ted the City's ar­gu­ments of sov­er­eign im­munity and res ju­dicata, found that CES was likely to suc­ceed on the mer­its, and found that the City's ac­tions were likely to cause CES ir­re­par­able in­jury.

Kent Rad­ford and Noah Rad­b­il handled the tem­por­ary-in­junc­tion hear­ing for CES.