Environmental claims involve complex damage measures that often include (i) the delay or alteration of real estate development, (ii) appraisal, and (ii) assessment of possible long-term stigma. We also investigate remediation cost claims, which often involve cost auditing, complex cost allocations, and/or assessments of the reasonableness of purchasing decisions.
Representative Projects
On Numerous Occasions:
- Reviewed the cost reimbursement claims of environmental remediation. Addressed issues such as:
- Were the moneys actually spent on the clean-up at issue?
- Did the claimant use prudent purchasing practices?
- Were related parties used in the clean-up efforts? Were the costs associated with the related parties equivalent to what could have occurred with unrelated parties?
- What reimbursements are appropriate, if any, for use of internal resources?
- Addressed stigma damages associated with prior environmental clean-up activities. This generally involved gathering market evidence of comparable transactions that were not affected by the prior environmental challenges.
- Calculated damages resulting from delayed real estate development occurring because of the need to first clean-up the underlying land. This necessarily involves reviewing changed market conditions that occurred at the time of the planned and eventual development.
- Addressed cost allocation issues between PRPs. An exemplar large clean-up allocation involved building a large database of costs involved, and running alternative algorithms based on (i) date, (ii) location within the larger clean-up zone, and (iii) materials cleaned-up.
- Calculated damages associated with land subsidence involving allegedly substandard retaining walls, and/or grading and infill in an improper/unsafe manner. This work involves assessing the market value of the real estate at multiple points in time.
- Calculated natural resource damage claims associated with toxic spills.