Environmental Litigation

Environmental and toxic tort litigation is one of Archer’s core practice areas. Our attorneys have an established track record litigating some of the most challenging environmental, natural resource damages (NRD), toxic tort, contract indemnity, and product liability matters in the country, including occupational exposure, pharmaceuticals, and environmental causes. We have litigated in federal and state courts in various jurisdictions throughout the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic regions, as well as in the Midwest, California and Oregon.

We have served as lead counsel in hundreds of cases, including cost recovery/contribution claims involving landfills, former mining locations, former manufacturing facilities, or Superfund sites; underground storage tank claims; groundwater contamination cases; citizen suit claims; and natural resource damage claims. These cases have involved hydrogeological issues, air modeling, hydrocarbon fingerprinting, aging analysis, forensic accounting and other complex issues. Because of the nature of the claims, many of the toxic tort matters we have handled were considered mass tort litigation as they involved hundreds or thousands of plaintiffs.

Our team focuses on those issues specific to environmental matters, including, but not limited to:

• Environmental problems related to leaking underground storage tanks, soil and groundwater contamination and MTBE contamination
• Defense of property damage litigation brought by owners, including owners of sites allegedly contaminated by off-site migration
• Defense of personal injury and medical monitoring claims based on alleged contaminant exposure
• Defense of litigation brought under the Pennsylvania Storage Tank and Spill Prevention Act, the Clean Streams Law and the Hazardous Sites Cleanup Act, as well as the New Jersey Spill Act and other common law public and private cost recovery actions, including litigation seeking natural resource damages (“NRD”)
• Assertion of affirmative claims against other responsible parties
• Petroleum Marketing Practices Act (“PMPA”) matters and other marketing matters

Our litigators are very skilled in achieving fair settlements and have done so countless times. The key to these settlements is a combination of Archer’s reputation as skilled and experienced environmental litigators who are formidable adversaries to the State and the long-standing relationships Archer has developed through those matters with high-level representatives of the Attorney General’s office and the NJDEP. Our attorneys work to quickly master complex factual and legal matters, identify critical issues, evaluate the merits efficiently, and to reduce and communicate complicated problems simply, practically and persuasively. Among our goals is to ensure that the litigation process causes minimal disruption to a client’s business activities.