Untangling liability and legal responsibility for cleanup costs in hazardous waste cases
The Summary
- We combine extensive ADR experience and legal and technical knowledge to successfully address the wide range of factors and situations that arise in cost allocation/Potentially Responsible Party matters, providing our clients with extensive and innovative expertise throughout the process.
The Client
- Multiple corporate, public and agency stakeholders working toward fair and equitable settlements to outstanding environmental cleanup issues.
The Rundown
- Our professionals utilize legal, factual and equitable analyses and the most up-to-date research methods—transactional databases and waste 'fingerprinting' and modeling, for example—to resolve complex cases of environmental responsibility. Among these cases:
- Convening of a contaminated sediment site. Facilitated organization of disparate PRP Group, designed allocation process and mediated allocator selection that obtained full agreement on site costs and work commitments.
- Facilitation of stakeholder involvement. Designed and facilitated meetings regarding community concerns about planned remedial action, resulting in consensus among local citizens, national environmental advocacy group, federal agencies, and responsible parties.
- Mediation of site costs dispute. Implemented a PRP search and mediated allocation negotiations at a site with over 4,000 entities. Developed nexus reports relative to individual transactions and options leading to a de minimis buyout.
- Allocation of costs recovery. Allocation addressed several technical and legal concerns over nexus and toxicity, as well as assignment of transporter and orphan shares. Waste-in information obtained through depositions of haulers and generator records, with allocation upheld in federal court.