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Due Care or Appropriate Care: What are the CERCLA Liability Traps?



Wednesday, June 27, 2012
Product Code - EHAU03
Speaker(s): Lawrence P. Schnapf, Schnapf LLC and Michael Sowinski, Terradex
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 To maintain liability protection under the federal superfund law, owners or operators of property need to comply with certain “due care” and “appropriate care” requirements. EPA guidance and recent case law are providing some insight on the scope of the appropriate care and due care requirements. However, the contours of these requirements pertaining to site management remain nuanced and can be complicated.

In this 90-minute webinar, the panelists will review the due care and appropriate care requirements for asserting CERCLA defenses and discuss the implications of recent case law addressing appropriate care and due care. Panelists also will discuss how the new ASTM E 2790-11 standard guide can be used to help parties identify and comply with such obligations as well as help address the issues raised in these recent cases.

This webinar is designed to:

  • Identify and analyze the CERCLA’s post-purchase requirements that must be satisfied for liability protection
  • Review recent cases that have analyzed due care and appropriate care requirements
  • Discuss how EPA guidance addresses the relationship between due care and appropriate care
  • Explain how due diligence and Phase I recommendations impact appropriate care or due care procedures
  • Examine what courts require of purchasers when moving dirt or phasing in development
  • Discuss how to satisfy due care/appropriate care requirements for stalled construction projects
  • Address how ASTM’s standard might be used to help ensure proper steps are being taken to satisfy appropriate care requirements.


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  • Personal attention. Once you’ve registered, send your questions in advance to annebrown@bna.com and they’ll be included in the program. You’ll also have a chance to ask your questions during the Webinar.
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Lawrence P. Schnapf, Schnapf LLC and Michael Sowinski, Terradex

 Larry Schanpf
Lawrence P. Schnapf is an environmental attorney based in New York City and New Jersey with more than 25 years of national environmental experience and is the principal of Schnapf Environmental Law Offices. Larry primarily concentrates on environmental issues associated with corporate, real estate and brownfield transactions; commercial financing including asset-based lending, syndicated loans, mezzanine loans and distressed debt; bankruptcy, workouts and corporate restructuring. He has extensive experience with brownfield redevelopment and financing, including representing affordable housing developers and assisting local development corporations or not-for-profit organizations with their brownfield planning programs. Larry also counsels clients on environmental, represents clients in federal and state environmental litigation, enforcement actions, administrative proceedings and private cost recovery actions. He has also served as liaison counsel for PRP steering committees. He has also written numerous articles on environmental law, is a contributing author for several chapters of “Brownfield Practice and Law: The Cleanup and Redevelopment of Contaminated Properties” published by Matthew Bender. He was also a contributing author for “The Law Of Environmental Justice” published by the American Bar Association and the Matthew Bender “Environmental Law Practice Guide.” He is also the author of “Managing Environmental Liability in Transactions and Brownfield Redevelopment” published by JurisLaw Publishing. Larry is the co-chair of the New York State Bar Association’s Hazardous Site Remediation Committee, co-chair of the NYSBA brownfield task force and a board member of the Board of the NYC Partnership of Brownfield Practitioners. He is also the chair of the Brownfield Committee Force of the Environmental Business Association of New York. He is Chair of the ABA Section of Business Law Committee on Environmental, Energy and Natural Resources Law. He is a vice chair of the Environmental Transactions, Audits and Brownfield Committee; and Special Committee on Disclosure of the ABA’s Section of Environment, Energy and Resources. He also is a member of the board of BNA’s Environmental Due Diligence Guide.


Contaminated Sites 3
Michael Sowinski is vice president of Terradex. He brings nearly 20 years of engineering and legal experience on environmental cleanup, environmental compliance, property redevelopment, and pollution control (i.e., CWA, RCRA) and is an expert in the niche area of institutional controls and long-term stewardship. Prior to joining Terradex, Michael practiced environmental law where he advised and litigated on behalf of local governments and private clients on cleanup, institutional controls, brownfields, water pollution, land use, and other environmental matters. His experience also includes a career in environmental consulting where he consulted to federal and state environmental agencies, as well as private clients, on environmental cleanup and compliance matters, ranging from broad-scale program advising on cleanup program and long term stewardship issues, to site-specific brownfields redevelopment, cleanup, water pollution, and environmental compliance matters. He received a BS and MS in Engineering from the University of Maryland, and a Juris Doctorate from Vermont Law School. Michael speaks and writes regularly on environmental cleanup, brownfields, and stewardship matters and, among others, he is a leading member of ASTM’s Continuing Obligations task group.