Toxic Torts

Experience Highlights

• Honeywell in defending against RCRA citizen lawsuits involving approximately three million tons of COPR used as fill at the Terminal, and also secured the dismissal of personal injury claims related to exposure to chromium ore processing residue.
• Mosaic in a putative class action on behalf of residents of two communities in Florida alleging property damages and an increased risk of disease from purportedly elevated levels of naturally occurring radiation on reclaimed mining lands.
• Pfizer in defending claims by a municipal utility that the company contributed to PCB contamination of the sewer system in Milwaukee.
• Wolverine World Wide Inc. in three federal putative class action tort lawsuits and more than 200 individual personal injury and property damage lawsuits arising from the alleged presence of PFAS in drinking water in the vicinity of Rockford, Michigan.
• BP in 20 novel climate change lawsuits filed by state and local governments in California, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, South Carolina, and Washington, and by a fishermen's trade association, alleging that greenhouse gas-driven sea-level rise is currently damaging their coastal communities and civil infrastructures.
• Atlantic Richfield Company since 1991 in nationwide governmental and private plaintiff litigation asserting public nuisance, class action, economic injury, property damage, and personal injury claims arising from long-ago production of lead pigments formerly used in paints. Won all four cases that have gone to trial, disposed of hundreds more by motion and successfully defended these victories in several federal courts of appeal and highest state courts.
• Honeywell, as lead toxic tort litigation counsel, in defending a consolidated class action and ≈52 individual toxic tort suits arising out of the presence of PFOA in the groundwater and municipal water supply of Hoosick Falls, New York.
• BP and ARCO as lead counsel for numerous cases originating on the West Coast involving the gasoline additive MTBE and as co-national coordinating counsel in ongoing national MDL proceedings involving MTBE. The proceedings involved nearly 100 lawsuits and hundreds of parties complaining of groundwater contamination from MTBE. Since 1999, we have successfully resolved all of the West Coast MTBE naming BP or ARCO as a defendant and, during MDL proceedings, we participated actively in developing strategic and tactical priorities for the joint-defense group as a whole.
• Honeywell in successful defense of a putative toxic tort class action seeking medical monitoring and property damage claims related to ≈135 sites in Jersey City, NJ, allegedly contaminated by chromium.
• Whirlpool Corporation, as lead counsel, in two mass tort alleged "cancer cluster" cases involving several dozen of the company's plants. These actions included wrongful death claims for allegedly causing multiple cases of childhood cancers in the communities as well as property damage claims. The cases were dismissed with prejudice.