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Environmental

The Environmental Litigation Group is a national practice.  We have been particularly active in Comprehensive Environmental Remediation Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA) cases, and our experience includes litigating cases under every major federal environmental statute, including the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, the Rivers and Harbors Act, RCRA, TSCA, and NEPA.  In litigating these matters, we also draw on the experience of two partners in our Washington office who were formerly senior staff attorneys at EPA headquarters.  In addition, our lawyers:

  • Serve as common counsel, including common trial counsel, or liaison counsel to groups of defendants;
  • Develop and pursue counterclaims against state or federal agencies;
  • Prepare, in conjunction with experts, detailed comments for filing with respect to EPA’s administrative record and challenging the agency’s proposed remedies;
  • Respond to EPA orders to perform remediation under §106;
  • Handle EPA information requests under §104; and
  • Work with investigators and historical researchers to identify additional PRPs.

How We Help Our Clients

Ropes & Gray has represented both plaintiffs and defendants in numerous private party hazardous waste cases brought under CERCLA and its state law analogs.  We handle issues of response costs, diminution of market value, and property damage.  We have proved our ability to deal successfully with cases brought under other environmental statutes, as in the following instances:

  • Defending government enforcement actions to assess civil penalties for noncompliance with environmental statutes;
  • Conducting internal company audits and investigations;
  • Defending criminal cases arising under environmental statutes;
  • Defending toxic tort litigation;
  • Seeking or opposing environmental permits, including those related to land use, septic systems, and wetlands, before administrative tribunals;
  • Challenging agency regulations and rule-making;
  • Litigating disputes between private parties under warranty, indemnity, and other agreements covering environmental liability; and
  • Litigating corporate liability disputes, including those of successor and parent/subsidiary liability.

We are aware that complex litigation has serious economic implications for our clients, and we are adept at developing creative approaches to controlling costs, including by negotiating settlements when appropriate.  We have, for example, successfully mediated and arbitrated environmental disputes, both before and after suit is filed.

Practice Focus Areas

CERCLA

We have extensive experience in cost recovery and natural resource damage litigation.  In CERCLA-related cases, we have defended clients at several of EPA’s largest National Priority List sites, including:

  • The New Bedford Harbor case, a natural resource damage and cost recovery action related to PCBs in the harbor of New Bedford, Massachusetts;
  • The Charles George case, a response cost action involving a large municipal/hazardous waste landfill in Tyngsboro, Massachusetts;
  • The Los Angeles Harbor case, a response cost and natural resource damage action related to a site in Torrance, California, and alleged PCB and DDT contamination on the offshore Palos Verdes Shelf; and
  • The Iron Mountain Mine case, a response cost action related to acid mine drainage at a site in northern California.

Through our work in defending clients in government-filed cases, we have challenged the basis for the government’s remedial decisions and natural resource valuations, employing our litigation skills informed with the aid of renowned technical experts.  We have developed working relationships with world-class experts, including academicians, in countless disciplines, ranging from biology to chemistry to economics.  We believe that it is critical to challenge the scientific and evidentiary basis for the government’s conclusions at both the administrative and trial levels.

In our experience, government decisions are often based on faulty science or incomplete evidence, generated by captive experts who are focused by various government agencies on reaching results that are essentially predetermined.  CERCLA liability, as interpreted by the courts, is both strict and retroactive, so an aggressive stance on remedy and damage issues generally provides the most potent defense.

Contact

For further information on this area of practice, please contact:

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