Holland & Hart LLP

Reaction during the first 36 hours after catastrophe strikes may determine the extent of adverse business impacts, tort liability, and even the outcomes in subsequent litigation.

Company managers that lack emergency response experience often make judgments that can compound the legal, financial, and reputational consequences to an organization.

Catastrophic events such as fire, explosion, accident, or major chemical release can cause significant injury, death, property damage, and environmental harm. These disasters can also subject companies to remedial and natural resource recovery obligations, and increasingly o civil and criminal enforcement and penalties, as well as significant liability exposure.

Holland & Hart's Emergency Response Group offers legal counsel to help deal with all stages of a catastrophic incident. We have the experience and training to help you respond immediately, manage the scene, guide the investigation, interact with regulatory agencies, and prepare for and defend the litigation that may result.

Incident Scene Management
Our clients often require on-site legal assistance during the critical hours following an incident to avoid or minimize liability. Holland & Hart's Emergency Response Group has significant experience on the ground with our clients' first response teams. We help to establish and manage both the initial and long-term legal response. We have responded to a multitude of emergencies, especially in the natural resource extraction industries.

From our arrival on scene we help clients collect and preserve critical evidence. Our team can also assist with media relations in the fragile hours after an event.

Internal And Government Investigations
When critical events such as oil or chemical spills, explosions, and severe workplace injuries or deaths occur, a government inquiry often follows. We assist through every stage of internal investigations as well as investigation by regulatory agencies, such as OSHA and MSHA, including responding to requests for information and negotiating favorable resolutions of citations.

Our attorneys are skilled at handling every phase of these delicate matters, including document collection, walkarounds, testimony, and preservation of attorney-client privileges and work product protections. Although we can and do aggressively defend our clients at trial, our goal is to avoid enforcement action entirely or achieve a resolution on terms favorable to our client.

Litigation
When the battle comes, our trial-tested lawyers can handle disaster-related litigation of any size and type, in particular cases with high exposure, throughout the Mountain West region. When necessary, we are prepared to represent defendants from initial accident investigation through all stages of litigation, including discovery, settlement, trial, and appeal. Our experience includes defense of cases for clients of all sizes, ranging from Fortune 500 companies to privately held or family businesses.

Holland & Hart has remained committed to litigation and trial technology. Our full-service mock trial room features all available courtroom technology, a jury box, and a judge's bench. Our in-house settlement and litigation consulting arm, Persuasion Strategies, offers services such as mock trials, judicial research, jury selection analysis, witness preparation, and case strategy consultation. With its own graphics department and multimedia center, Persuasion Strategies remains on the cutting edge in creating animations and virtual reality exhibits for the courtroom.

Training
We know from experience that emergency response preparedness is invaluable. With this in mind, we conduct training sessions for our clients on the most critical considerations, such as preserving evidence and responding to media requests. Our training also covers areas of concern that are not often addressed by insurance carriers or their adjusters, including response to agency investigations and attendance to preserving the attorney-client privilege and work product protections. We offer this training to companies in an effort to share some of the important lessons that we have learned over the years.

Experience
Members of our team have handled more than 50 on-the-ground emergency responses or internal incident investigations for clients.

Fires and Explosions

• Drilling Rigs
• Gas Plants
• Refineries
• Pipelines

Accidents

• Drilling Rigs
• Pipelines
• Trucking
• Recreation
• Underground and Surface Mining
• Railroad Operations
• General Industrial
• Construction

Holland & Hart's Statement of Commitment to Diversity
We are proud of our tradition of fostering and maintaining a work environment in which the diversity of each individual is valued and celebrated. We believe that the contributions of each individual are essential to our continued growth and to our ultimate goal of providing excellent quality legal services to our clients, with greater creativity and innovation. We are committed to taking full advantage of the rich backgrounds and abilities of our people and to promoting a greater diversity whenever and wherever possible.

Diversity Pledge
Holland & Hart is committed to promoting diversity by:

• Making every possible effort to recruit, hire, retain, and promote diverse persons at all levels of employment.
• Promoting greater sensitivity to the value of racial, ethnic and other forms of diversity, through diversity and sensitivity coaching or training for law firm members.
• Inviting to partnership diverse attorneys who meet the requisite criteria.

Diversity Initiatives
The following are additional examples of our commitment and efforts toward supporting and achieving diversity:

• We make a conscious effort to ensure that women and diverse attorneys are included as voting members of our committees of importance within the firm.
• We work closely with law school deans and placement directors in an effort to identify women and diverse law students who are interested in working at Holland & Hart.
• Holland & Hart offers medical and other benefits to partners of gay and lesbian employees on the same terms as it does to spouses of employees.
• We created an Indian Law Practice Group and actively recruited Native American law students and lateral hires.
• Each year we contribute to such scholarship funds as the Colorado Native American Indian Scholarship Fund, the Sam Cary Scholarship Endowment Fund, the Colorado Asian American Bar Scholarship Fund, the Colorado Hispanic Bar Scholarship Fund, and the Colorado Women's Bar Association Scholarship Fund.
• In partnership with the University of Idaho School of Law, we sponsor a "Law by Day, Jazz by Night" each year for undergraduate minority students who have an interest in law.
• We took a leadership role in organizing and supporting the Colorado Pledge Group's Minority First Year Law Student Summer Clerk Program. Through this program, law firms agreed to add at least one diverse first year law student to their summer clerk program.
• We were involved in the creation of the Cross-Professional Business Networking Group, where diverse attorneys in our community can meet and network with non-attorney professionals of color. We view this as a way to help diverse attorneys increase their business development possibilities.

For more information regarding Holland & Hart's commitment to diversity, please contact Peter Houtsma at (303) 295-8259.