Practice Areas & Industries: Holland & Hart LLP

Practice/Industry Group Overview

With the number one environmental practice in the nation according to Best Lawyers in America, clients rely on Holland & Hart attorneys for virtually all of their environmental litigation needs.  Our litigators effectively defend virtually every type of environmental case, including toxic tort suits, government enforcement actions, NEPA compliance, and natural resource damages and cost recovery actions under CERCLA.

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Representative Cases

Superfund

• We served as lead defense trial counsel for a global oil and gas enterprise in a case filed under the Federal Superfund law, in which Montana sought more than $700 million in damages.  The State alleged that hazardous substances were released from historic copper mining, milling and smelting operations in Butte and Anaconda, Montana, which injured natural resources in the Clark Fork River Basin.  The two parties presented testimony from more than 70 expert witnesses in many fields of expertise, including such diverse subjects as aquatic biology, geochemistry, hydrogeology, history, and natural resources economics.

Water Contamination/Clean Water Act

• We counseled current and former owners of an explosives manufacturing facility in litigation involving historic contamination of drinking water aquifers.
• We served as counsel to a state-created provider of contamination cleanup and third-party bodily injury and property damage insurance coverage for petroluem underground storage tank releases.  We have represented this client and its insureds in several groundwater contamination and remediation cases.
• We served as the lead trial counsel in a major groundwater contamination (methane) case for a major energy company in southwest Colorado and northwest New Mexico.  The case started out as a putative class action that, if certified, would have produced potential exposure in the billions of dollars.  We defeated the class first, and then successfully tried the cases to a jury.
• We are defending the Idaho Transportation Department (ITD) in an administrative challenge by a citizen group to the state's water quality certification under Section 401 of the Clean Water Act issued in connection with a pending Corps of Engineer's Section 404 permit.  This involved a mediation and a contested case hearing.

NEPA

• Holland & Hart represented an independent power corporation in three parallel cases involving challenges under NEPA and the National Historic Preservation Act brought by environmental groups and an Indian tribe.
• Holland & Hart has represented the ITD in defending challenges brought by environmental groups under NEPA to the Sandpoint Byway project in northern Idaho.
• We represented three municipalities and a business coalition in defending challenges to projects in Utah brought by environmental groups under NEPA.  The court ruled against the plaintiffs on all claims.
• We defended a government defense contractor in litigation brought by environmental groups under NEPA and RCRA.  The most recent case is a NEPA challenge to the programmatic FEIS pending in the D.C. District Court.  All prior decisions were in favor of our client.
• We represented the ITD in several actions involving a major highway construction project in northern Idaho.  These actions included a judicial challenge to NEPA and ESA approvals for the project, where ITD is co-defendant with the Federal Highway Administration.

Toxic Tort

• Holland & Hart represented a major pipeline company in a class action toxic tort case involving alleged asbestos contamination in the decommissioning of a 200-mile pipeline in northeastern Colorado.
• Holland & Hart represented a systems, solutions and technical service company and four other government contractors in a toxic tort case brought based on the alleged injury to a worker from exposure to chemical nerve gas.  The case settled after mediation.

Petroleum Releases

• We acted as regional counsel to a client for roughly all states west of the Mississippi, excluding Texas and California.  We received hundreds of claims and lawsuits in this outsourcing measure.  Due to the volume of claims and resources required, the company found it most efficient to engage Holland & Hart to function as an extension of their legal department.  When the State of Iowa commissioned private law firms to pursue hundreds of litigated claims against our client for reimbursement to the State's fund, we handled the lawsuits and ultimately negotiated a global settlement for resolution of all existing cases and future claims.
• We acted as regional counsel for the Mountain West, Washington and Oregon for an oil and gas company.  We handled environmental litigation involving petroleum releases.  The properties included contamination from service stations, bulk plants, terminals and various storage tank systems.

Environmental Insurance

• In multiple environmental insurance coverage cases we represented insured against their insurers, who denied coverage for the costs of investigation and remediation of Superfund cleanup sites.  Once notice of environmental insurance claims was submitted to our clients' insurers, the claims were invariably denied.  We then helped the client identify the correct policies (often dating back to the '50s, '60s and '70s), pursued claims against the insurers, negotiated settlements, and as necessary, litigated them through jury trials and appeals.  Several of these cases involved 2-4 cleanup sites in each trial.