Maine's highest court is scheduled to hear arguments in a legal dispute over the environmental cleanup of the former HoltraChem Manufacturing Co. plant in Orrington.

The Portland Press Herald reports that the Supreme Judicial Court will hear oral arguments Tuesday on an appeal by Mallinckrodt LLC, a St. Louis-based pharmaceutical company that inherited responsibility for the site after HoltraChem went bankrupt. Mallinckrodt is seeking to overturn an order that it must complete an environmental cleanup that could cost $250 million.

The chemical plant used mercury in its manufacturing processes and dumped waste directly into the Penobscot River. The plant later deposited waste in five landfills on its 235-acre campus.

Mallinckrodt contends in its appeal that the Maine Board of Environmental Protection overstepped its legal authority in ordering the cleanup.

The longest-serving current justice of the California Supreme Court announced Tuesday that she is retiring.

Justice Joyce Kennard notified Gov. Jerry Brown that she intends to step down on April 5, ending her 24-year tenure as a member of the state's highest court.

"The state and its people have been very well served by Justice Kennard," Brown said in a statement on Tuesday. "Her independence and intellectual fortitude have left a lasting mark on the Court."

Former Gov. George Deukmejian appointed Kennard to the Supreme Court in 1989, The San Jose Mercury News reported. She previously was a Los Angeles trial judge and an appeals court justice for a brief time before being elevated to the State Supreme Court.

Kennard, 72, has a unique personal history, according to the Mercury News, because she is a native of Indonesia, moved to the Netherlands as a teenager and lost part of her right leg to a tumor, forcing her to walk with a prosthetic the rest of her life.

Kennard moved to the United States in 1961, settling in Southern California. She earned her law degree from the University of Southern California.

In her tenure on the court, she became famous for interjecting questions during oral arguments, often turning them into lengthy speeches before pointing her finger at a lawyer and demanding an answer. Despite being an appointee of the conservative Deukmejian, she was often unpredictable in her rulings and would come down on the more liberal side of social issues before the court.

Kennard was in the 4-3 majority that in 2008 struck down California's long-standing ban on gay marriage, a ruling that preceded voter approval of Proposition 8 — which restored the same-sex marriage ban until the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated it last year.