Environmental Disputes

Despite their best efforts toward compliance, businesses often confront litigation by government agencies, private citizens, or both challenging environmental practices, seeking redress for alleged environmental harm or claiming personal injuries. Such challenges, regardless of their merit, can have significant reputational, social and economic implications for any company. Our environmental litigators have acted as defense counsel in some of the most contentious civil, administrative, and criminal enforcement actions pursued by federal, state and local governmental agencies around the world, touching all environmental media and all manner of claims. We frequently represent our clients in cost recovery and contribution actions associated with remediation projects at heavily contaminated sites and wide-ranging actions relating to cleanup disputes with state-owned enterprises over liability for global joint venture and other operations. Our group lawyers also have extensive experience representing clients in complex environmental toxic tort and class action cases arising out of impacted sites and chemical releases to the environment and from harmful exposures to products introduced into global supply chains. Having tried environmental cases to successful resolution, our lawyers have the experience and skills to aggressively, yet cost-effectively, defend our clients' interests and seek appropriate judicial relief in these contentious matters.