Environmental Litigation, Contribution, & Cost Recovery

BW’s attorneys have decades of experience in litigating contribution claims and cost-recovery actions. Our national dockets have included evaluating cost recovery opportunities under CERCLA and state law equivalents at more than 600 sites as part of corporate system-wide cost recovery programs, and our lawyers have successfully represented clients in contribution and cost-recovery cases in Superfund sites across the country. We have litigated contribution and cost recovery cases in numerous jurisdictions from coast-to-coast, achieving desired and often precedent-setting results for the Firm’s clients.

In addition to possessing hands-on expertise in all facets of CERCLA litigation, our Firm also possesses a depth of experience in handling complex environmental cases. Our Firm is well-known for its experience in handling difficult multi-party and multi-media environmental cases. In addition to the difficulties of assessing responsibility to multiple parties for multiple impacts due to multiple constituents, the litigation of such complex environmental cases also frequently involves complicated corporate ownership issues which must be deciphered in order to impose liability on corporate successors, assigns, divested or merged entities, or parent companies as appropriate. Plant ownership and corporate structure can change dramatically from the time an offending constituent was produced or released to the present day when impacts are being assessed or discovered. Accordingly, it is critical that a litigation team be familiar with corporate structuring issues and have the ability to trace liability and evaluate particular issues associated with liabilities retained, conveyed or arguably stranded in such vehicles or instruments as stock purchase agreements, holding companies and merger operations. Our attorneys have substantial experience in these areas, and we believe that our expertise in this regard, combined with our environmental regulatory and litigation knowledge, are extremely beneficial in complex environmental cases.

These skills are complemented by our Firm’s distinctive ability to provide a combination of experienced environmental litigators with experienced environmental regulatory counseling attorneys specifically skilled in the intricacies of complex regulatory matters to most effectively address the intertwined litigation and regulatory/agency components that are unique to a full-service environmental litigation practice. For almost two decades, the Firm’s lawyers have been deeply involved in numerous complex, multi-party environmental litigation. The availability of these multiple capacities in one firm, and the lawyers’ long histories of working together to provide an innovative and comprehensive litigation and regulatory team, is unusual to find in a single law firm and makes CBW a desirable choice as a full-service environmental legal provider.

Our attorneys also are accustomed to working with a wide range of parties involved in the commercial real estate business, including shopping center owners, real estate investors, property management companies, industrial and residential developers, brokers, landlords and tenants, and others to assist with risk-related environmental matters associated with financing, deed recordations, institutional controls, insurance and evaluation of long-term real property exit strategy options, as well as advising them regarding environmental obligations and claims in the context of bankruptcy proceedings. Our environmental litigation team also has developed a particular niche in representing institutional landowners.

From port authorities and governmental bodies to commercial landlords, we have aggressively represented these entities as both plaintiffs and defendants in property damage, nuisance, and cost recovery litigation associated with the release and/or migration of contaminants, historical contamination issues, and other environmental impacts involving real property. We have a history of proven results in contested administrative hearings and in court, making our lawyers well-suited to handle cases for large landowners and governmental or quasi-governmental landowners.