Natural Resource Damages & Environmental Justice
Environmental Agencies, Superfund Cleanups, and Managing Enforcement Actions
What are PFAS and Why Should We Care?
Volatile Times in Vapor Intrusion Regulation: A Legal and Technical Update
Last week, Law360 reported on a hearing that occurred in the Federal District Court for Eastern Pennsylvania before Judge Gerald Pappert concerning PFAS. The hearing concerned a motion to dismiss brought by the United States...more
Welcome to the second 2019 issue of Product Lines – our quarterly e-newsletter that focuses on toxic torts and products liability issues. For this edition, we are reporting on several important and timely legal issues. As...more
The Situation: The Sixth Circuit recently affirmed the certification of an issue class in a groundwater pollution case. The court endorsed a "broad" view of Rule 23(c)(4) under which common questions must predominate only...more
Seyfarth Synopsis: In a toxic tort class action stemming from automotive and dry cleaning facilities’ alleged contamination of groundwater near Dayton, Ohio, the Sixth Circuit affirmed an Ohio federal district court’s grant...more
Last week the Sixth Circuit took a big step to extend its reputation as one of the most class-friendly circuits in the country. In Martin v. Behr Dayton Thermal Prods. LLC, Judge Jane Stranch, writing for a unanimous panel,...more
A Florida federal district court recently denied a petition for class certification by a group of property owners that allegedly suffered health risks and diminished property values due to contamination at Pratt & Whitney’s...more
In a case demonstrating the limits of a Lone Pine strategy, a California federal court allowed a toxic tort class action to proceed after plaintiffs’ experts showed that “Plaintiffs’ case is not meritless or frivolous.” The...more
Seyfarth Synopsis: The Eighth Circuit found that a class action could not be sustained in an environmental pollution case because “the class lacks the requisite commonality and cohesiveness to satisfy Rule 23.”...more
An Illinois federal district court recently credited sampling data as evidence sufficient to establish the citizenship of putative class members for purposes of invoking the local controversy exception to CAFA jurisdiction. ...more
Exemplifying the reluctance of many courts to allow toxic tort cases to proceed as class actions, a federal judge in Arkansas denied certification of a putative class of neighboring landowners who claimed the Defendant’s...more
On the heels of the Court of Appeals’ landmark decision rejecting an independent cause of action for medical monitoring in Caronia v. Phillip Morris USA, on February 20, 2014, the Third Department decided Ivory v. IBM. Ivory...more