Environmental Harm
Have you ever suffered health problems or property damage from pollution or faced other environmental harm?
AKZ works to ensure that you are fairly compensated for any damage suffered from environmental pollution.
Federal and state environmental agencies are supposed to ensure that polluters clean up their air or water pollution, but that is not always enough. And it takes a private lawsuit for you to recover dollar damages for the harm done to your private property. We have successfully brought these type of lawsuits, for example, recovering for environmental damages to shorefront property separate and apart from the cleanup of the waters of Buzzards Bay, and separately forcing the state to protect wetlands it had previously ignored.
- In Gintis et al. v. Bouchard Transportation Co. Inc. et al., we represented a class of property owners on a 90 mile stretch of the Buzzards Bay coastline whose waterfront property was polluted by an oil spill on April 27, 2003. After extensive litigation, including a successful appeal of the district court’s initial denial of class certification, we settled the matter in 2010 for $11.45 million for a full recovery for our thousands of clients.
- In Lambert v. O’Donnell and Dept. of Environmental Protection, we represented plaintiff neighbors challenging a planned real estate development that threatened a pristine environment at Riggs Point in Gloucester, MA. We successfully sued in state court and overturned the DEP’s approval. The case was then sent back to an administrative tribunal, which agreed with our clients and halted the development before it could spoil the bordering wetlands.
