The Environmental Practice at Morris, Manning & Martin is one of the leading practices of its kind in the U.S. Our lawyers routinely assist clients across the country with environmental considerations and their impact on business and corporate real estate. Redevelopment of contaminated properties hinges on liability, regulations, and financing. Our lawyers navigate a course through these obstacles and steer clients toward meeting their goals.

Key Services

Purchase, redevelopment, financing and sale of environmentally impacted properties (brownfields) Negotiating risk allocation of environmental costs and liabilities Environmental permitting Environmental insurance negotiations & claims Pre-transaction environmental strategy and due diligence Negotiations with state & federal regulators

Litigation, arbitration, mediation and alternative dispute resolution in all state and federal courts and forums regarding environmental claims Negotiations of remediation agreements “Green” business and energy initiatives Foreclosure on environmentally impacted property and strategy for risk minimization

Negotiators and Litigators

Our lawyers address and solve environmental issues associated with every type of property, including steel mills, plating facilities, automobile manufacturing facilities, textile mills, military bases, ports, oil fields, shopping centers, landfills, timber assets, hotels, office complexes and residential developments. We develop mechanisms through which such properties can be purchased, financed, redeveloped and sold in an increasingly challenging market. This includes addressing environmental issues associated with distressed assets and, increasingly, port and infrastructure developments. Our lawyers possess broad based experience in issues associated with such developments, including Environmental Impact Statements and the permitting related to dredging and filling needed for port related expansions and development of other waterfront properties. We have also successfully negotiated and litigated broad-based environmental concerns, from cost recovery to insurance disputes. We deal on a daily basis with representatives of the EPA and their state counterparts and have resolved property rehabilitation issues for hundreds of environmentally impacted properties across the country, including Atlantic Station®.

Leadership Across the Field

Our lawyers are active in professional and regulatory circles, interpreting and drafting new regulations to guide business and industry toward creative new solutions. We serve as national environmental counsel for a number of major institutional clients. Our group includes lawyers with engineering and construction experience, an environmental specialist and a former state environmental regulator, adding technical and regulatory depth. We deal on a daily basis with representatives of the EPA, have developed close relationships with senior-level state regulators and regularly assist in developing cleanup standards that are realistic and cost-effective. We have developed brownfield legislation across the U.S. that engages local and state governments and provides economic and other incentives for redevelopment.

Focused on Solutions

Our lawyers concentrate on finding solutions to solve environmental risks while serving our clients’ business objectives. Redevelopment efforts proceed in combination with pollution cleanup, creating institutional-grade properties that become valuable business assets. Financing is secured with transferable liability protections. Our goal-oriented leadership on Atlantic Station® in Atlanta turned the nation’s largest brownfield site into a multi-use development that has earned the highest environmental accolades and the prestigious Phoenix Award. We are also actively involved on behalf of lenders in addressing distressed properties which suffer from environmental issues and in developing methods and strategies whereby the lender can realize upon its collateral. With environmentally compromised properties, land use, property values and corporate bottom lines are interwoven. Such disparate considerations can be overcome using the comprehensive expertise you will find in the Environmental lawyers at Morris, Manning & Martin.