Environmental Litigation

Our lawyers were in the forefront of environmental litigation for nearly three decades. We successfully handled individual lawsuits, nationwide litigation, class actions, and mass tort cases arising from hazardous waste sites and other sources of pollution.   

Our environmental practice was headed by Bob Shields, who became widely recognized in the early 1980s when he was lead counsel in one of the country’s first major environmental cases. He sued a major chemical company on behalf of the more than 1,200 mostly African American residents of Triana, Alabama for DDT and PCB pollution.  In a landmark settlement, the residents received a substantial monetary recovery, a trust fund was established to provide medical care and monitoring, and the defendant agreed to a consent order requiring cleanup of the contamination.

We were accustomed to working with some of the world's leading scientists on the technical aspects of environmental injury and had experience with asbestos, benzene, chlordane, dioxins, dieldrin, diesel exhaust, Dursban, lead, PCBs, beryllium, styrene VOCs, and other chemicals. We litigated cases on behalf of injured plaintiffs in cases involving the major federal regulatory statutes and had some familiarity with the regulatory process, one of our lawyers having served as an aide to the head of EPA. 

Much of our work involved “environmental justice” cases in which we represented residents of predominantly minority neighborhoods located close to major pollution sources. For example, we represented over 1500 African-Americans after a major chemical company in Anniston, Alabama contaminated their neighborhood with PCBs, recovering substantial compensation for their injuries.  Another example was a case in Jacksonville, Florida in which we represented several thousand African-Americans who lived near a municipal waste incinerator that we contended was intentionally located in a minority neighborhood in the 1940s.  Our lawsuit contended the residents suffered IQ loss and property damage because of exposure to lead from the incinerator. The case against the municipal defendants was settled before trial. A similar case involving a battery recycling facility located in a minority community in Detroit was settled after trial.