Toxic Torts
Backed by top-notch associates, staff, and using the latest technology, the RWCS legal team handles complex litigation including cases involving huge document productions and scores of depositions.
For example, during 2005-2009, RWCS handled a major toxic tort class action alleging property damage throughout a county-wide area. RWCS simultaneously defended against the Plaintiffs' allegations and pursued a contribution case against a third-party defendant. The case involved, among other things, production of more than 300,000 pages of documents by our client, production of more than one million pages of documents by the opposing third-party defendant, and 125 depositions. More than 75 percent of the depositions lasted one day or longer, including 31 multiple day expert depositions. The case included very detailed, sophisticated expert work in the following areas:
- County-wide air quality modeling (ambient air concentration as surrogate for ground-level deposition).
- Transmission electron microscope (TEM) analysis of hundreds of samples under ASTM standard.
- Oil refinery and carbon black manufacturing plant operations, air emissions, and control equipment.
- Aerial photography interpretation.
- Damages including alleged county-wide property value diminution and cleaning costs.
In 2010, RWCS also handled mass toxic tort litigation that involved taking the depositions of more than 400 individual plaintiffs and then conducting follow-up inspections of approximately 175 of their homes. The home inspections were done by a unique team led by an RWCS attorney using four experts: an experienced environmental forensic consultant to sample inside and outside following ASTM standards for identifying environmental particulate, a Ph.D. forensic and soils expert using a portable microscope, a local contractor with 37 years experience in home remodeling, and, on some occasions, a civil engineer with expertise in analysis of particulate or staining on roofs. The entire deposition-inspection campaign was conducted during November 2009-June 2010.