Environmental & Toxic Torts

Neal & Harwell has a long history of successfully defending companies and individuals involved in complex toxic tort and environmental litigation.  For over thirty years, we have represented clients in some the largest and highest profile environmental cases in the country, including criminal and civil litigation relating to the (then) largest oil spill in U.S. history, and multiple “mass action” trials involving the largest gas leak in a residential area in U.S. history.  In these types of cases, we have worked with oil and gas, manufacturing, and engineering companies, industry experts, and federal and state governmental and quasi-governmental agencies to manage hundreds of toxic tort and environmental claims.

We provide risk management and litigation services to clients at every stage in these matters, but are, first and foremost, trial counsel.  In many instances, we have been brought in as trial counsel after early efforts to resolve cases have been unsuccessful.   We help our clients to manage relationships and interactions involving client witnesses, experts, co-counsel and opposing counsel, court personnel, and e-discovery platforms and vendors.  We have, for years, helped our clients to establish “virtual” law firms, allowing close coordination between and amongst law firms, clients, and experts across the country.

Our attorneys have experience in mass tort cases, serial lawsuits, and other high profile cases defending toxic tort and environmental claims of actual or alleged contamination and/or exposure involving oil, gasoline, MTBE, benzene, NORM (naturally occurring radioactive material), coal ash, arsenic, lead, silica dust, and other organic and synthetic chemicals and compounds.  We have defended cases involving CERCLA (Superfund) sites, and alleged violations of the Clean Water Act, the Oil Pollution Prevention Act, and numerous other federal and state environmental laws and regulations.  We have handled cases involving allegations of groundwater, air, and soil contamination, and related claims by individuals and their family members alleging a wide range of medical conditions, need for medical monitoring, fear of cancer and other future injuries, and other novel claims for damages.