| Taft's Environmental Practice provides nationally recognized services in the areas of trial practice, Superfund defense and negotiation, enforcement defense, cost-recovery for plaintiffs and defendants, criminal environmental defense, environmental insurance and toxic tort litigation, mold and sick building litigation, lawsuits involving environmental problems discovered as a result of real property transfers or mergers and acquisitions, Brownfields redevelopment, defense of claims of occupational exposures, and administrative proceedings before state and federal agencies. Taft's environmental lawyers also regularly are engaged in insurance disputes concerning environmental issues and agricultural issues involving CAFOs and CFOs. As a Taft client, you can utilize the capital of 31 intensely motivated and focused attorneys in all facets of environmental law. |
Environmental Mediation: Five Tips for Success
With empirical studies showing that 90-95% of all cases (including environmental litigation) settle prior to trial, it is baffling how little preparation goes into preparing for mediation. Mediation has proven itself a resilient mechanism to resolve legal conflicts. Many courts require it. As environmental trial lawyers, we spend an enormous amount of time with jury consultants ensuring that we know as much as we can about potential jurors. Yet we fall short of the mark when it comes to mediation preparation. Continue reading to learn five tips to help you prior to and during environmental mediation.
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Indiana's Environmental Legal Action Statute: Court Interpretations
Indiana's Environmental Legal Action statute (the "ELA") allows plaintiffs to bring an environmental legal action against a person that caused or contributed to the release of a hazardous substance or petroleum to recover reasonable costs of cleaning up the contamination. IND. CODE § 13-30-9-2. The ELA is often alleged (along with numerous other claims) in cases involving environmental contamination because it can provide for the recovery of attorney fees. Ind. Code § 13-30-9-3(a)(6). Recently, there have been numerous state and federal cases examining the purpose and extent of liability under the ELA.
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| Environmental Fate and Transport Modeling: New Innovative Model Released
On Januray 12, 2011, an article was released on-line by the journal, Environmental Science & Technology, describing a new retrospective environmental fate and transport model that links several different modeling systems, including AERMOD, PRZM-3, BreZo, MODFLOW, and MT3DMS, to model historic environmental contaminant air dispersion, transit through the vadose zone, surface water transport, and groundwater flow and transport. The authors developed the model to generate retrospective predictions of historic exposures to perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) for use in epidemiologic analyses of thousands of people who used certain drinking water supplies in West Virginia and Ohio contaminated with PFOA.
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| Federal Abstention When State Environmental Proceedings Are Pending
On January 26, 2011, the First Circuit Court of Appeals vacated the decision of the district court to abstain from hearing a RCRA citizen suit brought concerning a leaking underground storage tank (UST), even though a state administrative proceeding was pending and addressing the same issues. Chico Service Station, Inc. v. Sol Puerto Rico Limited, -- F.3d -- , 2011 WL 228048 (1st Cir. Jan. 26, 2011). The plaintiff brought a RCRA citizens suit requesting an injunction to compel clean up of a formerly leaking UST. The Puerto Rico Environmental Quality Board (EQB) had been addressing this tank, the investigation, and its cleanup, for 17 years. An extensive series of remedial investigations had been conducted. No lawsuit had been filed against the defendant owner of the tank by the regulatory agency, but the agency and the tank owner were working together within the territory's regulatory structure to address the UST remediation.
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Environmental Law Insight is used to inform our clients and friends of significant new developments and current issues in environmental law. For more information about Taft Stettinius & Hollister LLP, please visit http://www.taftlaw.com.
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February 2011 Issue
· Environmental Mediation: Five Tips
for Success · Indiana's Environmental Legal Action Statute · Environmental Fate and Transport Modeling · Federal Abstention When State
Environmental Proceedings are
Pending |
|
