Environmental Law

While Bradley attorneys have extensive experience with knotty regulatory issues – such as compliance with the Clean Air Act and enforcement in highly regulated industries – we also provide sound, pragmatic legal advice to companies on transactional matters. We take a hands-on approach, venturing beyond our clients’ corporate offices and into the field – visiting plants, real estate holdings, and other sites – to respond to environmental issues with solutions that meet clients’ immediate needs as well as their long-term goals.

We have relationships with state and federal regulators that allow us to deal effectively to resolve clients’ issues.

Our environmental lawyers represent a broad range of clients in various industries, including:

• Large corporate clients in manufacturing and heavy industry, with either direct responsibility at their own facilities or properties they are financing or developing
• Real estate builders, developers, and construction companies in matters such as environmental assessments of property, purchasing and selling property, and related permits
• Energy companies, such as solar companies, coal miners, natural gas developers and transmissions companies, refineries, electric co-ops, and biomass companies
• Utilities, independent power producers seeking to put power on the grid, and pipeline companies that are operating interstate and intrastate with huge linear facilities
• Financial institutions at the development stage, providing advice on brownfields or greenfield development associated with wetlands, and refinancing that may involve environmental assessments, compliance, and managing related risks factors that these liabilities pose to our clients
• Insurance companies, brokers and policyholders, providing assistance in creating, defining, and obtaining coverage and writing manuscript policies
• Retail gasoline service stations

For more about our approach to environmental law, see our pages devoted to Environmental Regulatory, Transactional and Litigation, Natural Resources Litigation, and Real Estate.

Notable Matters

• Crafted amendments to EPA air regulations to allow international clients to build a new facility in Mississippi with new technology.
• Represented two defendants involved in the Deepwater Horizon oil rig and the largest oil spill in the history of the United States.
• Successfully defended Anadarko Petroleum in an Endangered Species Act and national environmental policy act challenge in the Southern District of Alabama to the lease of property from the United States in the Gulf of Mexico immediately after the Deepwater Horizon event for the purpose of oil exploration.
• Represented a nationwide multifamily housing provider in investigating, managing, defending, and resolving environmental claims at its residential properties, including for mold, asbestos, lead, and other exposures.
• Assisted an international real estate developer in a matter involving environmental contamination of a client-owned apartment complex caused by gasoline station operations of an adjacent landowner, including guidance regarding permitting access to the property for investigation, working with expert consultants for analysis of vapor intrusion test results, and negotiating agreements defining scope of environmental investigation.
• Represented a client in a multiparty CERCLA cost recovery and contribution action brought by the owner of a contaminated property against prior owners and operators of the property seeking recovery of portions of a multimillion-dollar investigation and remediation costs.
• Defended a consumer product manufacturer in premises liability asbestos cases in Illinois, Delaware, and California, including drafting motions that ultimately resulted in dismissal of all claims against our client.