Areas of Practice: Litigation and Dispute Resolution

We have represented numerous large and small commercial property owners, manufacturers and other business operations in litigation and administrative proceedings involving releases of petroleum and hazardous substances.  We achieve favorable and precedent-setting results.

Significant matters include:

• Winning a jury verdict against an environmental consulting firm that failed to properly conduct a gasoline station clean-up. Award included compensatory and punitive damages in excess of $2.4 million.

• Winning a precedent-setting $2.5 million navigation law judgment (NY Oil Spill Law) on the issue of liability in the New York Appellate Division. Our client's property was contaminated when the local rail service parked a train with a leaking oil tank there. The trial court decision, affirmed on appeal, found in our favor on important questions regarding the statute of limitations under the navigation law, and awarded damages that included lost profits and remediation costs. On appeal, the court awarded attorneys fees in excess of $700,000.

• Representing a gasoline dealer in a citizen's suit brought under the Resource Conservation Recovery Act, one of the first such actions against a dealer that neither delivered gasoline nor controlled the underground storage tanks on the site.

• Winning summary judgment in New York state court in favor of the owner of property contaminated by former tenants' gas station operations. The court's decision was significant because it imposed liability against the individual who controlled the corporate defendants, without engaging in a formal "piercing of the corporate veil."  Attorneys' fees were awarded to our client as indirect damages under the New York navigation law.

• Negotiating a Superfund settlement concerning a client's commercial property under which all investigation, clean-up and governmental oversight costs were paid by former owners and operators of the site.

• Obtaining numerous consent decrees and de minimis settlements at federal and state Superfund sites for manufacturing clients in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Delaware and Pennsylvania.

• Prosecuting and defending breach of contract and professional malpractice claims of environmental consultants and contractors.

Real Estate  |  Corporate  |  Remediation  |  Litigation  |  Insurance  |  Expert Testimony