EMLA appealed a Budapest City Police traffic directorate decision banning the Capitol City Earth Day demonstration and march organized by several big environmental groups including the Energy Club and Budapest Bicycle Friends. The traffic directorate had decided that the demonstration, scheduled for April 22, the day before Easter, would be disruptive to traffic. The Capitol City Court decided to annul the police decision and allowed the demonstration to take place. This case is an achievement for EMLA and the demonstrators as a quick and decisive victory over the authorities is a rarity.

We provided a legal opinion for the Törökbálint Mayor in a forest privatization case that he brought to us three months after a "final" Ministerial-level decision had been handed down. Two hundred and eleven hectares of the forest had been privatized in 1994, a decision that the Mayor succeeded in having repealed in 1997, which was then overturned, in 1999, in favor of a group of eleven local citizens who wanted the forest privatized. We learned that this court decision and the subsequent decision of the Minister responsible for privatization were legally incorrect and so we suggested an appeal based on extraordinary legal remedies. At the same time, in the event that this avenue proved fruitless, we examined the legal possibilities for patrolling the forest with armed municipal guards to prevent illegal cutting of trees. In the end EMLA's arguments convinced the court to leave the disputed lands in public hands. This case is an exception to the norm, as a group of citizens played the "bad guy" while the municipality represented the interests of the general public and of the environment in its fight for preserving public lands.

In 1992 a gas station was built in a park opposite our client's home. In 1995, we filed a lawsuit against the station for nuisances and for damages based on declining home real estate value and the health of our client. This year, we finally settled with the station and agreed to the following terms which the Court of the Capitol approved as the final and executable decision: the gas station was to cease operation by the end of 1999 (it actually happened!); the station was to restore the public park to its original condition-as it was before the building of the station; and no further environmental damage would be made. The plaintiff then withdrew his claims (both real estate devaluation and health damages) in return for the gas station's concessions.

In a village north of Budapest called Budakalász, the METRO supermarket chain wanted to build a shopping mall, not right next to the highway, but next to a branch of the Danube and near a wetland instead. EMLA helped a local NGO in trying to influence the municipality in its zoning decision and the company in its strategic decision. The NGO initiated a local referendum on the issue. The referendum was not valid, however, because not enough people voted. Nonetheless, METRO changed its mind and abandoned the idea of building the mall, and the town's mayor resigned due to the local resistance. All of these events received a good deal of media attention.

We fought the decision to permit the cutting down of trees on Roosevelt Square, which sits on the banks of the Danube and has beautified the city landscape for centuries. Our argument rested on the historical richness of the square. In the end, the court allowed the investor to destroy the trees for the sake of an underground parking garage. Greens got information late in the process. They chained themselves to the trees, held protests, and some of them were arrested-all in vain. EMLA wrote a legal complaint because the decision-making authority was not even willing to acknowledge the legitimate interests of our clients (Clean Air Action Group, Environmental Initiative, and others).

The M0 Highway is a major roadway designed to form a loop around Budapest. Before the loop was completed, environmentalists disputed the planning for the highway’s northern tier while the construction lobby pushed for completion of the full circle. Plans for the disputed section would run only two hundred meters from apartment buildings in the large residential district of Káposztásmegyer. Approximately ten thousand people would be directly threatened by noise and air pollution from the proposed highway. Since the highway was to be put on high pillars at this northern point, the harmful effects could not be contained by insulation walls or woods. Residents of Káposztásmegyer formed an NGO and turned to EMLA to fight the stretch of highway. The NGO (which counted a private attorney amongst its member volunteers) and EMLA brought a civil law suit asking the court to prohibit the planned line of M0 Highway. Since construction had already begun by the time the locals got information on it, we asked the court to issue an injunction against further work as well. In August 1999, the court held its first hearing, heard from our experts, and agreed that the highway in its proposed form threatened the health and environment of the Káposztásmegyer residents. In September 1999 the court issued the requested injunction halting all work on the highway until a final decision was passed. The construction company doubled its efforts in response to the first trial and tripled its work after the injunction. Their lawyers stated that the injunction contained unclear language. In late October 1999 the Minister of Traffic, Telecommunication, and Water Management cut the ribbon above the new stretch of highway, proclaiming it "the biggest environmental investment of the year," and opened it to traffic. Our exasperated clients dropped the case with no hope of undoing the action.

Kapás Street runs through one of the most polluted parts of Buda. Residents of the old apartment buildings lining the street were glad a decade ago when several of the apartment blocks were demolished, allowing some open air for those remaining. The already less-than-ideal situation was about to become worse as a large bank purchased the vacant lots with plans to construct a housing development covering almost one hundred percent of the open space. The apartment residents organized themselves and found lawyers and technical experts to fight the bank's plan. However, as is typical in such cases, the residents began their legal fight quite late in the process. They started a two-front battle seeking legal remedy against the already granted construction permit while lobbying at the municipal council to change the local spatial plan in order to prevent the bank from building on the entire parcel of the land in question. EMLA lawyers were successful in court, while the well- orchestrated lobbying effort convinced the municipality to modify the spatial plan as well.

This shooting range nuisance case from Mátyásföld in Budapest has been going on for five years already without any substantial outcome. EMLA has turned for remedy to the European Court of Human Rights on behalf of the plaintiff. The judge in Hungary, the fourth to preside over the case, did take the very positive step of visiting the home of the plaintiff for a first hand experience of the firearm noise against which our client has to contend.

SPAR has built a giant supermarket in Nyíregyháza in the northeastern part of Hungary. Area residents opposed construction of the market because it would devalue their homes, ruin their vistas, and generate heavy car and truck traffic. EMLA represented a group of neighbors as they tried to deny SPAR the construction permit. At the first level, the municipal court refused our claim based on the argument that the neighbors had no standing because there is a street between their houses and the site of the proposed supermarket. We brought the case to the next level where the county court accepted our clients' claim for standing and ordered the municipal authority to reconsider the case-this time involving affected residents in the process. Without winning the case, we won a major victory as the county court interpreted the law in a way that allowed for public participation!

The Gaja Association, an NGO, asked a state-owned company to release information on the general biological and chemical quality of its drinking water for the town of Székesfehérvár which is home to an abandoned bauxite mine. The company purported that data on drinking water is not to be shared with the public. During the legal proceedings, in which EMLA represented Gaja, the company changed its mind and offered some data about the drinking water, but not as much as our client had wanted. The company claimed that it does not measure other data. The judge said that the data, about micropollution, is outside the realm of general biological and chemical data, and therefore we cannot ask for it during the same trial. However, we can file another petition with the company, and if they refuse our request, we can sue them in a separate proceeding. The judge's decision is a success because we got some of the information we wanted, and more importantly, the legal motivation behind the verdict made it clear that offering access to this kind of data is in the public's interest.

EMLA is defending two authors and a publisher on charges of libel brought by a famous Hungarian hunter. Several years ago our clients wrote and published a book about protected birds in which they highlighted a criminal case on which they served as expert witnesses. The case concerned a hunter who had come up with the idea of exporting hawks abroad as game birds rather than outright shooting them here in Hungary. Hunters who followed the plan captured about two hundred hawks per year but could sell only fifty of them. The remaining animals ended up dying in their coops. After finding hawk nestlings and falcons in the hunter’s apartment, the police began a criminal investigation. After a few years of investigation and trial, the court said that the hunter's activities did constitute a penal offense but that the he would go unpunished because the crime did not seriously endanger society and because several years had passed since the actual crime was committed. In spite of the ruling, the hunter claims that he lost his good name because of the portrayal of the case-which was picked up by many newspapers and magazines-in our clients' book. The court has now ordered our clients to write a letter of apology to the hunter. Even though we "lost" the case, the judge ordered no payment of damages and we are going forward with an appeal.

Two elderly ladies live in a tiny, one room flat on Pozsonyi Street, part of a lively shopping district in Budapest. In 1992 a large butcher's shop housing mammoth refrigerators and other electronic devices opened up directly below their apartment. The women began experiencing strange symptoms including burning skin, itchiness, and sleeping problems. They responded with complaint letters to the authorities. The answer was always the same: everything is in order with permits and regulations, if the women are too sensitive to"something," it is not a legal problem. Since the symptoms did not disappear (except when they were away from the flat for long periods), the two elderly women continued complaining until four years later the local construction authority finally made a formal decision--a denial of the women's complaint. The unfavorable decision did, however, allow for an appeal at the administrative supervisory court. EMLA undertook the women's representation at this point. Proving the causal link between the electric devices and the symptoms was extremely difficult. We had several expert opinions which described the symptoms and others which evaluated the electrosmog in the flat, but no one was willing to say more than "maybe" to connect the two. Even though the judge felt strong sympathy for the suffering clients, she had no legal basis on which to abolish the earlier decision. After losing the case the first time around (we are going to appeal it), we have pursued the interests of our clients in other ways. We started a direct conversation with the local construction authority. We asked them to consider enclosing the wires within sidewalls or under pavement instead of leaving them exposed. During these discussions we also appealed to the sympathy of the authorities for our clients' plight. The case is important for EMLA because it is illustrative of the unfortunate fact that new forms of causation tend to be overlooked, ignored, or outright denied. The case is also special on a human level because of the long years of suffering the two elderly women have endured.

The firm Biofilter wants to build a hazardous waste incinerator in the industrial area of Csévharaszt outside of Budapest. Most of the firms in the area produce food products for human or animal consumption. The food producers hired an attorney to fight this action. Their attorney in turn asked EMLA for assistance on the case because of our Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) and construction permitting process expertise. This is important in our work because it is the first time a private attorney is paying EMLA for assistance on a case.

A year ago we reported that KGYE, a local environmental group, opposed the building of a plasma energy-based incinerator in the village of Kengyel in eastern Hungary. At that time KGYE convinced the first-level Environmental Inspectorate to deny Green World Co. the permit based on land use reasons (agricultural cultivation) rather than environmental concerns. This summer Green World retaliated with a suit against the Inspectorate with EMLA representing KGYE as a friend of the court on the side of the Inspectorate. This time the court forced the Inspectorate to issue the permit. KGYE has enlisted EMLA to pursue a case claiming that the permit issued has errors and asking for an injunction barring further work on the site until a final decision is passed. This case is essentially about laying down an untested, hi-tech incinerator in a traditionally rural, agricultural area. Not only is the incinerator contrary to sustainable land use, it also poses a serious threat to the farmers' livelihood in that they face public suspicion of their products.

In the XV. District of Budapest a propane gas storage facility was built in close proximity to a residential area. EMLA took the residents' complaint to court first against the issuing of the building permit and then against the issuing of the operating permit. The court refused to deal with the merits of our arguments at the first level, saying that it was clear that we did not have standing. In this case, the court used the most basic interpretation of standing, noting that our clients do not live within the requisite (i.e., allowing for standing) distance of the site, but rather across the street from it. At the second administrative level, EMLA appealed against the operating permit, specifically a "small industrial site" operational permit. Generally the authority hears more substantive issues during this second round. However, we again faced the basic issue of standing. EMLA must now convince the authority to broaden the range of parties or conditions for which it grants standing. Essentially we are arguing that it's not only the residents who live next door to such a facility that are affected, but likely the ones living across the street as well; and therefore, our clients deserve standing before the court. If we win on this point, it could be a precedent setter for determining who gets standing in this type of"small industrial site" case. The case has already gained attention on a national television broadcast as neighborhood residents demonstrated at a public hearing surrounding the case.

Csepreg is a beautiful small village located near the famous Bükkfürdô spa. In 1991 our clients built their home in this lovely region-with two extra rooms to host tourists and earn a second income. Just after they finished the house, a private entrepreneur bought the neighboring lands and built a metal producing factory not more than twenty meters away from several homes. The noise was terrible, especially in the summer when everyone wanted the windows open. Several families started to protest, but the entrepreneur seemed to be very influential and they gave up one by one-except for the Horváth family. The Horváths went from authority to authority, sent complaints, requested noise measuring. They received polite answers but the only "change" was that the entrepreneur decided to build a metal finishing and chemical factory (galvanizing) beside the existing one.

At that point, in 1997, the Horváths turned to EMLA. We decided to start a civil law litigation for the damages the factory caused. In the present year we have had three trials. The real estate expert stated that the loss in value of the Horváth home is over twenty percent, witnesses described the noise situation in the vicinity of the factory, and on one occasion the judge herself visited the scene to examine the situation. Just after the judge's visit we sent a video tape to the court which proved that the factory went on halfspeed during her visit, and later the noise returned to its usual level. The final decision will be handed down in December 2000. The case is precedent-setting in Hungarian environmental damage cases, and the example the Horváth family shows is especially important for revitalizing the local community. Notwithstanding the final outcome, the brave and persistent fight of the Horváth family encourages many in the village of Csepreg to raise their voices against changing the local land development plans which would allow the entrepreneur to further expand his activities in the heart of the village.