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From Oil Spills to Midnight Dumping: What Makes an Environmental Harm Turn Criminal?



Thursday, March 10, 2011
Product Code - EHAU04
Speaker(s): Bruce Pasfield and Kris Dighe
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During the past year, the Environmental Protection Agency has increased the number of its criminal investigators nationwide to more than 200 in compliance with the 1990 Pollution Prosecution Act. Many practitioners still have questions about criminal investigations and how decisions are made concerning whether and who to charge, as well as what their client should do if the client discovers evidence of potentially criminal conduct. Some of these issues are dealt with in formal policies, while others are a matter of practice after decades of developing environmental crimes cases.

In this 90-minute webinar, Bruce Pasfield, a partner in Alston & Bird LLP, environment and land use practice group, and Kris Dighe, assistant chief for the Department of Justices Environmental Crimes Section will discuss key issues that often arise in environmental crimes investigations and cases. The webinar is designed to help you:

  • Understand how environmental crimes cases come to the attention of DOJ and EPA
  • Learn about the factors taken into consideration in determining whether to prosecute an environmental violation criminally, civilly, or through EPAs administrative processes
  • Identify elements of the most common federal criminal environmental violations and become aware of the tools available to government investigators
  • Gain insight about what a company should do if it learns of a violation prior to the governments initiation of a criminal investigation and how to manage the corporate response to a criminal investigation
  • Make informed decisions regarding litigation strategies including whether to waive attorney client privilege in making disclosures to the government, how to address e-discovery issues, and how to manage parallel proceedings
  • Strategically manage whistle-blower allegations and understand the pitfalls of self-reporting
  • Craft strategies to negotiate with DOJ and EPA

Bruce Pasfield and Kris Dighe

Bruce Pasfield is a partner in the Washington, D.C., office of Alston & Bird LLP. He has a national practice in environmental crimes defense after serving as one of the nations top environmental prosecutors at the U.S. Department of Justice. Bruce defends a wide variety of clients in criminal enforcement actions in alleged violations of federal or state environmental laws as well as other federal law violations. In addition to criminal enforcement defense work, he represents companies in civil and administrative matters and provides companies with permit and compliance counseling on environment and energy issues in the United States and abroad. Bruce currently is chair for the Environmental Enforcement and Crimes Committee of the American Bar Association, as well as a member of the ABA Oil and Gas Committee. He also is a regular lecturer for the ABA and has written numerous articles on environmental crimes topics.

Kris Dighe is an assistant chief with the U.S. Department of Justices Environmental Crimes Section, where he has been since February 2004. Prior to that, he was an Assistant United States Attorney with the U.S. Attorneys Office in Detroit, Mich., for more than nine years. At the U.S. Attorneys Office, Kris prosecuted environmental crimes, public corruption, and criminal civil rights cases. Prior to joining the U.S. Attorney's Office in December 1994, Kris spent five years in private practice with Dykema Gossett in Detroit, Mich., and Shutts and Bowen in Miami, Fla., as a civil litigator. He previously was a law clerk for the Hon. Stanley Marcus, a federal judge in Miami, Fla. Kris graduated from Wayne State University Law School, and served as an editor on the Wayne Law Review.