Most of the work of the Environmental Torts (ET) Section arises from government contractor or military activities, and from environmental regulatory activity.  The cases often involve hundreds of plaintiffs alleging injuries caused by air, surface water, or groundwater contamination, or by direct contact with hazardous substances.  The contaminants at issue include chemicals, as well as fuels, carbon monoxide, and bacteria.  These actions usually are brought under the FTCA, but are also premised upon admiralty and contract law, or various environmental statutes.  Due to the complexity of such tort matters, ET typically handles these issues, rather than delegating them to the United States Attorneys Offices.   

Examples of our practice

Recent cases involved allegations of environmental contamination from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California; the Army's World War I testing of chemical weapons in what is now the Spring Valley neighborhood of Washington, DC; the Department of Interior's application of herbicide over a large portion of Idaho; the Department of Agriculture's use of pesticides in Nebraska, Texas, and Florida; lead in a house sold by HUD in Rhode Island; and exposure to lead in wastes from mining activities on Native American property in Oklahoma; as well as allegations of injuries from groundwater contamination or toxic air exposures at  present and former military facilities in more than a dozen states.  In Vallier (the $800 million groundwater contamination case arising out of the JPL), the ET trial team developed facts dating back to before World War II establishing that the government had properly exercised its discretion in leaving environmental compliance to its contractor, co-defendant and third-party-plaintiff Caltech.