Environmental Litigation

Baker & McKenzie's environmental lawyers—several of whom have prior government enforcement experience—advise and represent companies in all types of domestic and international environmental litigation matters.

Our environmental attorneys have acted in defense of government and private cost recovery actions, regulatory compliance lawsuits, Superfund litigation and criminal actions to provide our clients with aggressive yet cost effective representation in litigation and contested administrative proceedings. We frequently represent clients in ongoing complex environmental litigation in courts throughout the world.

Our Superfund litigation experience includes successful negotiation of settlements through De Minimus and De Micromis settlement mechanisms and alternative dispute resolution techniques. One of our attorneys currently chairs the technical committee on a major Superfund Site in the Midwest. We have assisted in a successful challenge to the U.S. government's assignment of health risk associated with contaminants of concern at Superfund sites, thereby saving enormous potential remediation expense.

Members of the group represent clients in litigation from a wide range of industries including real estate developers, the printing industry, environmental consulting firms, chemical manufacturers, insurers, paper and paper board container manufacturers, the oil and gas industry and manufacturers of a diversified range of goods. In addition, we provide contractors and engineers with sophisticated finance, tax and commercial law advice, in combination with our environmental capability.

Baker & McKenzie also provides a full range of environmental law advice to industry and government clients with respect to:

• Counsel During Internal Audits
• International Environmental Law Surveys
• Joint Ventures, Mergers and Acquisitions
• Corporate Expansion Planning
• Parent/Shareholder/Director/Officer Liability
• International Dispute Resolution and Litigation

Recent representative matters include the following:

• We are representing a corporation in the defense of a class action, pending in U.S. District Court in Chicago, brought by residents alleging contamination of their drinking water well from historic spills at the facility of subsidiary. The plaintiffs claims of CERCLA/RCRA parent liability and common law counts for alleged damages of property value diminution, personal injury, emotional distress, medical monitoring and punitives.
• We represented a former director and officer of a chemical manufacturer in an appeal of his criminal conviction pending before the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Significant issues include responsible corporate officer liability, admissibility of expert testimony, and claims under the Clean Water Act, RCRA, and CERCLA. The client's company was in bankruptcy at the time of the alleged violations, creating additional issues regarding the overlap of bankruptcy and environmental laws.
• We represented a chicken processing company in the defense of a criminal conspiracy to violate the Clean Water Act litigated in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi. We successfully obtained a dismissal of the conspiracy count against the company after litigation against the government.
• We represented an oil company in the defense of a RCRA action brought for the recovery of costs plaintiff had spent remediating its facility. A favorable summary judgment dismissal was obtained in the client's favor in the district court (997 F.Supp. 1073 (N.D. ILL.1998) and a significant victory in the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals upholding the prohibition against recovery of response costs under RCRA incurred after the initiation of litigation (170 F.3d 692 (7th Cir. 1999)).
• We represented a paper company in the defense of the government's cost recovery action and an action for substantial civil penalties for alleged failure to adequately respond to an EPA information request, in two separate civil actions brought by the United States pursuant to CERCLA §107 and §104(e). Significant issues litigated in these cases were divisibility of harm and equitable appointment of liability, recoverability of future oversight costs and the use of equitable defenses in civil penalty actions.
• We are representing a German chemical manufacturing company in a class action pending in the Northern District of Ohio which sought damages in the hundreds of millions of dollars from our client and the client's U.S. subsidiary for alleged contamination of their property along a 20-mile stretch of creek in northeast Ohio. The client owns a superfund site, which is the alleged source of the contamination. Defense against plaintiff's claims for emotional distress, property value diminution, loss of use, medical monitoring and punitive damages.
• We represented a manufacturing company in the District Court in Connecticut as plaintiff in a cost recovery action against the former owners and operators of a manufacturing facility contaminated by the defendants' past operations at the site. The case was settled on the first day of trial with the defendants' reimbursement of our client's remedial expenditures.
• We are representing a manufacturing company in an action brought by the State of Illinois concerning groundwater contamination in the vicinity of our client's facility. Issues such as access to neighboring property, potential toxic tort/diminution litigation brought by neighbors, successful negotiation of a favorable consent decree and a challenge to the state's groundwater modeling scenarios are issues which were litigated.
• We represented a national environmental engineering firm in the defense of environmental, contract and toxic tort litigation claims brought by the City of San Antonio, Texas, and hundreds of its citizens arising out of the city's construction of the Alamodome stadium on a lead contaminated site.
• We are representing a broad coalition of construction industry associations comprised of thousands of member companies in litigation against the State of Texas environmental agency seeking a declaration that agency rules promulgated in an effort to cause a severe non-attainment area to comply with the Clean Air Act's National Ambient Air Quality Standards for ozone are invalid under state law and preempted by the Clean Air Act.
• We are representing a chemical manufacturer in a mass toxic tort claim by thousands of Plaintiffs arising from the chemical releases featured in the movie Erin Brokavich.