Find Lawyers in Cherry Hill, New Jersey for Environmental Law
Practice Area Overview
Environmental law involves an intricate matrix of federal and state public welfare statutes enacted to protect both human health and our natural resources. The economic and socio-geopolitical impact of these laws requires the practice of environmental law to continuously evolve. Areas of environmental law include the following:
Regulatory
The input and experience of an environmental lawyer is crucial in designing, supporting, and auditing environmental compliance systems. Environmental lawyers often participate in the administrative process on the federal and state level to encourage sound rulemaking. They also assist clients in sorting through regulatory ambiguities, which sometimes arise in enforcement proceedings.
Litigation
Environmental litigation occurs at both the civil and criminal level. Enforcement proceedings with federal and state regulators are conducted through either administrative adjudications or in court. Most federal environmental statutes have citizen suit provisions allowing individuals to initiate enforcement litigation on behalf of the government. Suits contesting environmental permits and siting decisions occur frequently and can cause significant delays for projects. Superfund designations are a source of significant litigation, particularly in the cost recovery area. Other areas of environmental litigation include: toxic torts, natural resource damages, water rights disputes, brownfields, endangered species challenges, climate change, and groundwater contamination suits.
Business Transactions
Environmental laws can significantly impact the economics of an M&A or real property transaction. If a facility does not have the entitlements to operate; has an expensive compliance issue that must be remedied; or has significant cleanup liability, it can materially alter the viability and/or structure of a deal. Clients depend on environmental lawyers to establish deal parameters and translate risks into economic terms for the valuation process.
Strategic Corporate Planning
Depending on how environmental regulations develop, a company could gain a significant economic advantage over its competitors. Evolving regulation in areas such greenhouse gas emissions have the potential of altering the business model of some companies, while creating growth opportunities for others.
Corporate Governance
Events such as the Deepwater Horizon accident are redefining the roles of senior executives and boards of directors. There is a new wave of internal controls that many corporations are implementing in response to regulatory and shareholder influence.
Crisis Management
An environmental crisis such as an oil spill, toxic leak, or refinery explosion can be a defining moment in the history of a corporation. When a crisis hits, all aspects of environmental law come into play and requires experienced, clear-eyed counsel to help corporations, municipalities, and other impacted entities to successfully respond to and emerge from such an event.
Partner Robb Fox has a diverse practice involving compliance counseling, litigation and transactional work for clients in the waste, chemical manufacturing and development industries and on behalf of cities and municipalities. He is known nationally for his work under the federal Superfund law including handling many high profile Superfund matters such as the Keystone Landfill matter, featured on 60 Minutes, and the Gowanus Canal and Newtown Creek sites. He regularly litigates Superfund issue...
Bryan is a partner at the firm and has experience in counseling and representing clients on a range of environmental and energy matters. Bryan’s practice has focused on regulatory compliance and transactional matters, particularly in the areas of air and water quality, redevelopment, sustainability, permitting, energy efficiency and renewable energy development. Over the last several years, Bryan has primarily worked with complex regulated industries, notably including petroleum refinin...
Brenda Hustis Gotanda is a partner with the law firm of Manko, Gold, Katcher & Fox LLP and leads the firm’s sustainability practice group. She has over 25 years of experience representing and counseling business clients on environmental matters, including regulatory compliance, permitting, transactions, project development, and enforcement. She provides strategic guidance to clients seeking to reduce risk and enhance value by integrating environmental compliance and sustainability i...
Carol is the managing partner of Manko, Gold, Katcher & Fox LLP, working in the firm's complex industrial and regulatory practices. She has worked with a broad range of industrial clients in the manufacturing, energy and waste management sectors. Carol counsels clients on a wide variety of environmental issues, including permitting, compliance and enforcement matters related to air emissions, storage tanks, stormwater, wastewater, and hazardous and non-hazardous waste. She has assisted cl...
Nicole Moshang is a litigation partner at the firm where she represents clients in the pursuit of and in defense of environmental claims for cost recovery, contribution, natural resource damages, toxic tort, breach of contract, insurance coverage and enforcement and penalty actions under various state and federal statutes. In addition to her litigation practice, Nicole advises clients on a range of environmental matters, including regulatory compliance with federal, state and local regimes. N...
Former Chair of the American Bar Association's Superfund and Natural Resources Damages Litigation Committee, Shoshana (Suzanne Ilene) Schiller (she/her) is a partner in the firm’s litigation group, handling a wide range of disputes with particular experience in CERCLA, cost recovery, contribution and real estate litigation. Shoshana is AV® Preeminent® Peer Review Rated* through Martindale-Hubbell® and a Senior Fellow of the Litigation Counsel of America, trying jury and non-...
Jonathan Spergel is the immediate past managing partner of Manko, Gold, Katcher & Fox LLP in Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania, the environmental and energy law firm with which he started his legal career in 1993. He handles a wide variety of environmental legal issues, including the environmental aspects of commercial transactions and brownfields sites, environmental insurance procurement and coverage issues, public funding opportunities, regulatory compliance counseling, and litigation for comm...
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