Services
DGS is known for its expertise in and successful defense of environmental toxic tort actions involving personal injury, medical monitoring and/or property damage claims in Colorado state and federal courts as well as state and federal courts in other Western jurisdictions. These cases typically involve claims alleging common law torts, unjust enrichment, and violations of federal and state environmental statutes. Some also include claims under citizen suit provisions in environmental statutes. These cases include class actions, cases in which class certification was denied, cases in which bellwether plaintiff claims were tried, and individual plaintiff cases.
Recently, as public debate focuses on hydraulic fracturing or “fracking” of oil and gas wells, we have begun to defend oil and gas operators and oil and gas service companies in toxic tort cases based on those activities. The claims and many of the scientific issues in the hydraulic fracturing cases are the same as those that we have litigated and tried for many years in defense of manufacturers in numerous SIC codes, mining companies, railroads, pipeline companies, and oil and gas companies, among others.
Our lawyers have a wealth of knowledge and experience in litigating claims pertaining to claimed human exposures to chemicals via ingestion of water from public or private water supplies, dermal contact with water, dust or soils, and inhalation of dust and vapors including indoor air contamination from vapor intrusion. Substances at issue in one or more of our cases include chlorinated solvents (PCE, TCE, TCA, and DCE), asbestos, nitrates, lead, arsenic and other metals, uranium and other radioactive elements, and/or petroleum hydrocarbons. Many of these cases concern property damage claims based on contamination of ground water, soil, indoor air, or structures.
We have tried these cases to juries and to judges. In two of the jury trials, the juries returned verdicts of no loss of property value. One of these jury trials was a class action, and the other was a trial of bellwether claims for a group of more than 100 plaintiffs.
In trying and preparing these cases for trial, both trial and environmental lawyers typically work as teams. Several of the lawyers working in this area draw upon their prior training in the sciences and economics as well as the experience they have gained by working closely with hydrogeologists, environmental engineers, chemists, economists, appraisers, experts in standard of care for various industries, toxicologists, epidemiologists and physicians with a wide range of specialties. This foundation assists these lawyers in simplifying complex scientific, economic and statistical concepts for a lay fact-finder.
