“Jiangsu Court Sides With NGOs in Polluted School Case”, 28 December 2018

A high court in eastern China… overturned a ruling that had imposed “sky-high” court costs on two nongovernmental organizations. The two groups — Friends of Nature and the China Biodiversity Conservation and Green Development Foundation — sued three chemical companies in April 2016 for polluting the site of a school in the city of Changzhou.

According to… verdict document, the Jiangsu High People’s Court waived the 1.89 million yuan ($275,000) that a lower court had levied against the two NGOs. The high court also ordered the three companies to publicly apologize for polluting the land and pay a total of 230,000 yuan to each NGO for expenses incurred during the judicial process...

Environmentalists have welcomed the high court’s reversal of the previous decision. Ge Feng, director of legal and policy affairs at Friends of Nature, told Sixth Tone that the ruling could serve as a legal basis for Changzhou’s municipal government to seek compensation from the polluting factories…