Environmental and Natural Resources litigation and consulting often involve multiple concurrent issues, each with narrow and particular complications, all of them interacting in complex ways. Multiple experts are generally necessary as, given the sophistication of the subject matter, professionals often specialize.

To add to the complexity of this rapidly evolving and frequently gray area of the law is the pressing challenge of climate change. Frustrated by a lack of progress on climate change-related regulation, a number of American cities, municipalities, and groups of concerned citizens are filing lawsuits against fossil fuel companies and others over the industry’s role in global warming. These lawsuits seek compensation for rising sea levels, extreme weather events, and unforeseen disasters they claim are caused by carbon emissions and climate change. To date, courts have generally held that Congress is the appropriate branch to regulate emissions, and that regulators are better equipped than judges to address the global issue of climate policy. Still, despite limited success in the courts, the number of climate liability and public nuisance suits is growing rapidly.

Perhaps more than some other areas, environmental litigation and regulatory approval are often reduced to a battle of experts. The party with the reliably relevant, best prepared, and most credible environmental experts is likely to prevail.

Expertise for Every Situation

Toxic tort class actions related to injuries from lead-based paint, asbestos and similar hazard exposures may simultaneously require environmental hazards experts such as toxicologists, risk assessors, and epidemiologists. We’ve placed specialized experts – and expert teams like this — in many environmental cases, including those involving Clean Air Act emissions and environmental risk assessments.

Identifying experts with niche expertise is our specialty. An EPA denial of a pesticide registration under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act may require an expert who understands the impact of a pesticide product on aquatic organisms. Developing a Brownfields site, you’ll need a strong and highly experienced hydrogeologist expert to help you defend your groundwater management plan before regulators. Environmental insurance reimbursement claims for petroleum tank spills or other toxic releases can necessitate a wide range of environmental forensic experts to determine the cause and scope of damages that must be remediated.

While many of our professionals act as litigation expert witnesses, we also provide experts to assist your business in research and development or in making operational decisions. Our team of on-demand expert resources can review a groundwater remediation plan, develop a wastewater system for your plant, or help develop cradle-to-grave functional and environmentally sound packaging for your consumer products. And if you are a construction firm that needs an archeological mitigation expert on a major building site excavation, we can help with that, too.

Here is a representative but by no means exhaustive, list of specialties within our team of Environmental experts:

• Federal, state and local environmental laws and regulations including EPA, NEPA, RCRA, CERCLA, CWA, CAA and FIFRA
• Environmental Engineering (soil science, geology, biology, chemistry)
• Environmental Archaeology
• Environmental Insurance Coverage Disputes
• Environmental Mitigation
• Toxic Exposure and Risk Assessments
• Contaminated Property Acquisition
• Brownfields Redevelopment
• California Proposition 65
• Civil Engineering