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This website is authored by Lester Levy, Esq.
a founding member of JAMS.

  • About
    • About Lester Levy
  • The Basics of Environmental Mediation
    • What types of Environmental Cases can be mediated?
    • The Benefits of Environmental Mediation
    • The Environmental Mediation Process
    • Insurance Company Involvement
    • The Mediation Outcome
  • Case Studies
    • Case Study 1: Objectivity as Resolution Tool Provided Through A Neutral Expert
    • Case Study 2: Working Together
    • Case Study 3: Swift, Fair and Efficient: Awarding Compensation to Toxic Tort Victims
    • Case Study 4: Sequenced Regulatory and Insurance Negotiations
    • Case Study 5: How Communication Both Causes and Ends Conflict
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You are here: Home / Archives for environmental clean up

A New Paradigm for Solving Complex Environmental Disputes

April 1, 2016 by Lester Levy 1 Comment

Complex-Environmental-Disputes

We live in a world of ever-growing concern about environmental harm to our health and wellbeing.  We are acutely aware of future environmental risk, such as climate change and sea level rise, and diminishing natural resources, such as clean drinking water and the air we breathe.   To address the concerns, environmental cases need to be handled more intelligently and more effectively.  As environmental problems grow in scale and complexity, we are in need of a new paradigm for resolving them.

We have the tools to make this happen but our dispute resolution models remain stagnant; stuck in the past tense.  Unlike rapid and continuous innovation in science, technology, telecommunication and medicine, for example, the “old” ways of environmental dispute resolution – primarily through generic pre-trial procedural mechanisms – is inefficient and overly expensive.  The current default reliance on the conventions of traditional tort litigation, where every party retains its own army of lawyers, experts, consultants, lobbyists, etc., is wasteful and often misdirected.  Further, current norms were not designed to effectively promote the efficient and orderly identification and remediation of the contamination, or other problem, at issue.  More often, they merely move money from one pocket to another without a corresponding increase in environmental improvement and protection.

The status quo ante imposes a high social cost to the extent complex environmental disputes remain unresolved and problems fester.  The more time it takes to implement a cleanup, the more expensive the costs of that operation become.  In groundwater, for example, the contaminants can continue to migrate laterally and vertically such that  larger, more powerful remedial technologies will eventually be required to do the job.  Or in the case of drinking water, just think of the high health and social costs imposed on the citizens of Flint Michigan as a result of delay in taking remedial action.  Many of these escalating costs, in turn, are ultimately borne by taxpayers, thereby increasing the societal economic costs of pollution and its cleanup. Moreover, the clean up costs are in addition to already extremely expensive litigation-based transactional costs, which multiply each week, as the case remains unresolved.  Unfortunately, most environmental cases move through the judicial system like molasses, while the environmental harm at issue tends to migrate and grow. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Mediation vs. Litigation Tagged With: alternative dispute resolution, environmental clean up, environmental mediation, Flint, mediation process

Our Environment is a Precious Resource and Should be Treated as Such

March 20, 2016 by Lester Levy Leave a Comment

Our Environment is a Precious ResourceA New York Times article on March 17th includes an op ed., stating in part,

“Water may be the most important item in our lives, our economy and our landscape about which we know the least.”

Concurrently, the Washington Post ran an article reporting that:

“The World Health Organization has put a number on the people estimated to have died as a result of living or working in an unhealthy environment and it’s big — 12.6 million. That number represents one in four of all deaths globally and underscores the devastating impact of the chemicals and waste we’ve been putting into the air, water and earth since the end of World War II.”

These reports underscore many of the themes that I have been writing about these last few months:  Why do we leave these critical issues to resolution as we might any other tort-based claim.  By contrast, the societal impacts of pollution directly affect our health and enjoyment of our natural environment.  The costs of investigation and cleanup – whether in the form of scientific remediation or as damages to those injured by the contamination – are borne directly by our business communities and the American taxpayers.  Further, we spend far too many discretionary dollars in moving these cases through an over-burdened and overly expensive court system – which is not designed to handle the difficult scientific and regulatory issues that predominate in environmental cases. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Mediation vs. Litigation Tagged With: ADR, alternative dispute resolution, climate change, environmental clean up, environmental disputes, environmental mediation

Using ADR to Manage Compensation Schemes with Mass Claimants

February 16, 2016 by Lester Levy 1 Comment

Compensation Schemes with Mass ClaimantsRecent decades have seen a dramatic rise in the use of Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) proceedings as a means to evaluate claims and compensate qualified parties in a mass claims settings.  These cases can arise from settlements in class or mass actions filed in court or as government-originated programs designed to compensate victims of a military or environmental disaster.

Some examples that I have handled include the settlement and distribution of over $2 billion to low income farmers alleging discriminatory lending practices by the USDA; the distribution of relief to several hundred thousand claimants alleging wage and hour claims against another US governmental agency; the settlement and distribution of compensation to millions of claimants alleging wrongful conduct by a national credit card provider; the review and determination of compensation to class members alleging defective products in a variety of industries; and, of course, the distribution of settlement benefits to thousands people alleging harm from environmental releases into the air, surface- and ground- waters.

While these processes have proven to be very effective in achieving the efficient review and fair payment of claims arising from the same event or a similar type of harm, for the process to be successful, the clients seeking compensation must understand the process and what is expected of them.  Transparency is critical to engender trust.  Trust, in part, depends upon the design and implementation of procedural safeguards. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Process Tagged With: alternative dispute resolution, class actions, compensation, environmental clean up, mediation, mediation process, settlement

How Mediation Can Accelerate Environmental Cleanup

January 12, 2016 by Lester Levy Leave a Comment

environmental mediation cleanupLawyers are creatures of habit.  We are steeped in it.  It starts with the training we receive in law school where we are taught a series of rules and procedures to be followed in all legal proceedings.  In litigation the rules cover everything from cradle to grave, starting from the initiation of a lawsuit through trial and final appeal.  The rules are intended to guarantee that each case will receive identically fair consideration and due process protections, irrespective of who the parties are or the nature of the dispute. Everyone is entitled to equal treatment and the process is the same for everyone.  Every case is handled the same way.

For example, the rules of procedure permit every party to discover information from all other parties.  Uniform conventions permit any party to request and receive responses orally, in writing or to inspect real property and other relevant objects.  These rules were designed to create uniformity in process so that every case, whether large or small, is administered the same as any other.  The rules were designed to prevent undue bias or benefit to any party by treating each case identically from a procedural point of view.

While the principle of uniformity – treating all cases alike – appeals to our basic sense of fairness it can be out of sync with the needs of contemporary society.  Uniform rules and procedures are inherently resistant and slow to change.  The law, in its attempt to provide a uniform regime  prides itself on adhering to long-established conventions.  For categories of disputes that have not changed much over the years (such as breach of contract cases, general torts, ,personal injuries, etc.), mandated consistency in procedure is of a lesser concern, since these cases do not cry out for change in the way they are resolved. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Mediation vs. Litigation Tagged With: ADR, environmental clean up, mediation, uniformity

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About Me

lester-levy

I strongly believe in the value of mediation – said another way, environmental mediation really works. I would go even further: I believe that environmental disputes are perfectly suited to the mediation process – perhaps more so than any other area of legal practice. I have formed these views after mediating environmental cases for more than 20 years, throughout the United States, and having worked with thousands of lawyers, companies, insurance carriers, regulatory agencies and courts. My … Read more

My Latest Posts

  • The inter-generational theft of Brexit and climate change
  • Our Drinking Water Regulation Is So Weak Even Flint’s Water Got A Pass
  • Environmental Mediation: A New Paradigm for Resolving Multi-Party Disputes
  • Flexibility Is Key to Success in Mediation
  • Leaving the EU would put our environment at risk

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Lester Levy

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