PRACTICE AREAS
We have helped public clients and individuals recover substantial damages from major corporations in the areas of environmental, natural resource damages, consumer protection, products liability, and toxic torts litigation. Our team is also skilled in appellate practice.
Natural Resource Damages
Our firm is nationally recognized as a pioneer in natural resource damages (“NRD”) litigation.
Many federal and state statutes authorize governmental entities to pursue damages for injuries to the natural resources they hold in trust for the public, including the costs of restoring injured resources to their pre-contaminated state and damages to compensate the public for the lost use of those resources. NRD claims are often highly complex and implicate a wide range of legal, scientific, and economic disciplines.
Our firm’s representation of the Government of the U.S. Virgin Islands in the Tutu Wells litigation in the late 1990s has been cited as the first known instance of a state or territorial government retaining outside counsel on a contingent fee arrangement to prosecute NRD claims on its behalf. Since that time, the firm has regularly been retained by public clients to pursue claims against large corporations that have caused significant injuries to groundwater and other natural resources as a result of contamination by hazardous substances and pollutants, including petroleum products, the gasoline additive methyl tertiary butyl ether (“MTBE”), bauxite tailings, lead, mercury, polyfluoralkyl and perfluroalkyl substances (“PFAS”), and aqueous film forming foam (“AFFF”).
To date, the firm’s efforts have yielded judgments and settlements valued at more than $600 million in damages and restoration projects for its public clients, including the State of New Jersey, the State of Maryland, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.