Environmental

Prince Lobel’s Environmental Practice Group offers clients the full range of environmental legal representation, including litigation, counseling, permitting, regulatory, and transactional services.  Members of the practice group have represented businesses, property owners, lessees, developers, insurers, public entities, contractors, real estate investors, lenders, engineers, and others.   

Our experienced attorneys have handled matters that cover a wide array of local, state and federal environmental, health, safety, and land use regulations, such as those governing site and building contamination, hazardous and solid wastes, hazardous, toxic, and radioactive materials, wetlands and floodplains, air emissions, indoor air, wastewater and stormwater discharges,  tidelands, facility siting, endangered species, underground storage tanks, asbestos, lead paint, worker safety, and environmental impact reviews.

The group’s litigation services encompass both affirmative and defensive actions, at the administrative, trial, and appellate levels, and include:

• Site contamination cases under Chapter 21E and CERCLA (whether involving cleanup obligations, cost recovery, diminished property value, natural resource damages, or economic loss)
• Environmental permitting and land use appeals
• Environmental enforcement actions
• Penalty and remedial actions under OSHA and other workplace safety regulations
• Asbestos and other toxic tort claims
• Landlord/tenant disputes involving alleged health, safety, and environmental risks
• Environmental and toxic tort insurance coverage litigation 

The Environmental Practice Group regularly represents businesses, property owners, and other clients in environmental permitting, compliance, regulatory, and transactional matters.  This aspect of the group’s practice includes:

• Obtaining local, state, and federal environmental approvals and permits
• Advice and representation in connection with real estate contamination issues, including the preparation, review and evaluation of environmental site assessments, the preparation of Activity and Use Limitations, and evaluation and monitoring of compliance with the Massachusetts Contingency Plan
• MEPA and NEPA compliance
• Brownfields redevelopment
• Title 5 septic system issues
• Implementation of the LEED Green Building Rating System ^TM
• Due diligence reviews, environmental disclosures, and other assistance in connection with corporate and real estate transactions 

Group members are also available to provide regulatory compliance counseling and audits, provide environmental advice related to SEC compliance, conduct internal investigations, and participate in the planning for and response to governmental inspections and investigations.

Representative Matters

Members of Prince Lobel’s Environmental Practice Group have:

• Prevailed at trial and on appeal in a case involving contamination of commercial property, recovering cleanup costs and lost rental income
• Successfully tried a toxic tort insurance coverage action
• Won a trial against the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection before its own hearing officer, reversing state and local wetlands permitting and enforcement actions that had prevented a subsided commercial parking lot from being returned to its previously permitted elevation
• Negotiated as common counsel to about 40 waste generators an early settlement of a complex private Superfund action, with settlement payments by each equaling less than the transaction costs of continued litigation alone
• Obtained from state officials an unprecedented covenant not to sue, an agreement to establish a Special Review Procedure for a phased development project under MEPA, and a decision not to prosecute an alleged environmental crime in light of evidence of governmental acquiescence
• Convinced a state radiation safety agency to reverse a decision that was impeding settlement of a major landlord/tenant dispute involving alleged contamination of an industrial building
• Obtained a landmark decision from the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court upholding the state’s Hazardous Waste Facility Siting Act and developed a legal argument accepted by that court regarding application of the “discovery rule” in connection with statute of limitations defenses in private actions for environmental property damage
• Represented the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority on environmental matters, including litigation involving gasoline contamination at Turnpike rest areas
• Provided environmental compliance counseling to clients in the life sciences, construction, energy, health care, financial services, and hospitality industries 
• Submitted appellate briefs to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court and the Rhode Island Supreme Court that, respectively, opposed judicial expansion of the scope of MEPA to cover health risks unrelated to environmental releases and helped reverse a trial court’s expansion of public nuisance doctrine to impose retroactive, unforeseeable, no-fault liability for the lawful sale of lead paint
• Addressed global environmental issues for a major multinational public company
• Settled hundreds of asbestos personal injury claims against a client for an average paid claim value of less than $1000
• Settled a $3.8 million environmental property damage claim against a client for $450,000
• Helped “write the book” on assessment of indoor air contamination
• Successfully negotiated the ground lease of a brownfields site for a retail development and helped a condominium association ensure proper closeout of a brownfields site by a developer
• Negotiated a consent order for conversion of an apartment complex from septic systems to a private onsite wastewater treatment system
• Helped draft the provisions of the Massachusetts Contingency Plan relating to Activity and Use Limitations and the Massachusetts Licensed Site Professional regulations, and helped reorganize the state’s approach to environmental enforcement actions to ensure greater consistency and predictability and distinguish criminal violations from those better redressed civilly or administratively
• Written and lectured extensively on topics of environmental law and litigation