Post-closing diligence is critically important when buying or selling environmentally-contaminated property.  Whenever contaminated property changes hands, one of the first questions asked is who will be responsible for cleaning up the contamination and obtaining closure from the appropriate regulatory agency.  Clients often turn to their lawyers to come up with the appropriate terms and conditions to best protect their interests, but ultimately the clients make the decision of the terms they are willing to accept and the risks they are willing to take.  But what happens post-closing?

For example, assume a seller will remain obligated to “remediate the contamination in a diligent and commercially reasonable manner so as promptly achieve closure with the responsible regulatory agency.”  Will the seller’s post-closing proposal to achieve closure by a decade of monitoring and natural attenuation, as compared to an active remediation system that can achieve closure in half the time, be interpreted by the appropriate regulatory agency or the courts in your jurisdiction as “diligent and commercially reasonable”?

To learn more. please read Bill Wagner's recent blog post on Commonground.