ENVIRONMENTAL LAW

Recently, Ms. Feigen has expanded her practice to include environmental law. She represents clients in cases where toxic substances in the water, soil or air need to be cleaned up and remediated. Often clients are defendants who are responsible but maybe not solely responsible for the damage they or their predecessors on the site have left and that causes injury to people, as well as property. This then entails finding other Potentially Responsible Parties (PRPs) who have contributed to the environmental damage at the site. Ms. Feigen works with consultants including a licensed private investigator who is highly experienced in environmental site histories. Her close collaboration with an investigative team also helps in identifying and locating potential witnesses who may play an important role in determining what entities have actually polluted the site. She also uses scientific environmental consultants who perform tests on air, soil and water suspected of being contaminated and determine the likely flow of groundwater, etc.

This field is expanding because both state and federal agencies are cracking down on perpetrators who have left messes in their wake. Often, particularly in the past or in decades when oversight has been lax, oil and chemical companies have moved or sold sites they had been on without adequately cleaning up, only to cause damage possibly years later to innocent third parties. There are numerous state and federal agencies that provide oversight, as well as repositories of information, and Ms. Feigen works with these agencies, as well as the information they collect, to rectify the wrongs that have been done.

Because these kind of cases often involve complex litigation and vast amounts of pre-trial discovery, Ms. Feigen partners with large firms, when necessary, to create a powerful team for the representation of her clients.