Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher has represented clients in connection with environmental and mass tort issues for more than 30 years. The Environmental Litigation & Mass Tort Practice Group provides clients expert counsel on a variety of legal issues and challenges in these areas.
We represent clients in all types of environmental and mass tort litigation, such as toxic tort cases, class actions, private cost recovery actions, government enforcement actions, citizen suits, and rulemaking proceedings. Our lawyers also regularly counsel clients in connection with ongoing regulatory compliance, legislative activities, environmental due diligence, and related transactional concerns, which enables us to approach each legal issue with a broad perspective that takes into account all of our clients’ concerns.
Litigation Practice
Attorneys in our Group represent clients in a broad variety of civil and criminal litigation before both federal and state courts, as well as administrative agencies. We also are active in counseling our clients about various forms of alternative dispute resolution.
Environmental and mass tort litigation, like other commercial litigation, benefits from aggressive discovery and early, targeted motions practice to help defeat or at least define and narrow claims. Once claims are narrowed and ambiguity in claims eliminated, settlement is often significantly easier. We have been successful in applying this approach to cases involving both government and non-government litigants.
We have represented clients in a wide variety of industries, including oil and gas, electronics, defense, pulp and paper, agriculture, automobile manufacturing, air frame construction, land development, lending, retailing, mining, and general manufacturing, among others, in matters involving: (1) the defense of claims for personal injury and property damage involving alleged exposure to toxic chemicals, including claims brought in the form of class actions; (2) the defense, and in some cases the prosecution, of private claims concerning the cleanup of contaminated property; (3) the defense of prosecutions by public agencies and enforcement entities at the federal, state and local level for alleged violations of environmental laws; (4) the defense of private prosecutions for alleged violations of environmental laws using citizen suit provisions and bounty hunter provisions in the environmental statutes; and (5) challenges to federal, state and local rulemakings concerning environmental requirements.
Our lawyers have appeared in federal and state courts throughout the United States on these types of actions and have been involved in a number of high profile, precedent- setting matters that have led to published decisions that affect or control the interpretation of applicable laws. Additional information about our practice and past accomplishments are set forth in the links below:
Because of the scope of the issues we address, Environmental Litigation & Mass Tort Practice Group attorneys work closely with attorneys in the firm’s other practice areas, including Litigation, Appellate, Class Action and Complex Litigation, and Real Estate, to provide efficient service to our clients.
Further Information
For further information about the Environmental Litigation & Mass Tort Practice Group, please contact any of the practice group chairs: Patrick W. Dennis; Jeffrey D. Dintzer; Alan N. Bick; or Peter E. Seley.