Home » Webinars » Natural Resource Damages: The Assessment Battle

Natural Resource Damages: The Assessment Battle

Strategies for Valuing and Contesting NRD Injury and Damages

Recording of a 90-minute CLE webinar/teleconference with Q&A

Conducted on Thursday, October 15, 2009
Recorded event now available

This seminar will review the process for valuing injury and damages in natural resource damage (NRD) claims and will outline best practices for valuation.

Description

Measuring natural resource damage (NRD) claims is often contentious and controversial and can involve staggering amounts (e.g., Exxon Valdez). NRD claims have been described as the "sleeping giant" due to the potential for huge recoveries under a web of federal and state laws.

NRD claims include restoration costs, equivalent resource replacement, loss of use of the resource, and assessment expenses. Assessing these damages is fact intensive and involves numerous experts and scientific studies; the potential expense and magnitude of claims often lead to litigation.

With NRD claims and settlements rising, companies and their counsel must understand the methods for determining and quantifying injury and damages. A cooperative assessment option, where parties jointly explore technical damages assessment, can generate real efficiencies and savings—but not always.

Listen as our authoritative panel of environmental attorneys explains the process for measuring natural resource damages. The panel will offer strategies for accomplishing each phase of valuing injury and damages, including weighing the cooperative assessment option.

Outline

Regulations for assessing NRD
1. Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA)
2. Oil Pollution Act of 1990 (OPA)
3. State laws
Injury determination
1. Covered natural resource?
2. Injury to resource?
3. Connection between incident/spill and injured natural resource
Injury quantification
1. Baseline condition of resource
2. Extent or scope of injury
3. Baseline services
4. Recoverability of resource
5. Reduction in services attributable to release
Damage determination
1. Value of injured resource v. cost to restore/replace resource
2. Value of services lost
3. Compensable value/lost use value
Cooperative assessment
1. Joint technical assessment of damages
2. Transaction costs
3. When is it worth it?
Best practices

Benefits

The panel will review these and other key questions:

How can the parties best make the determinations necessary for injury determination?
How can the parties best position themselves during the NRD assessment process?
When does cooperative assessment work?

Faculty

Michael R. Thorp,
Summit Law Group, Seattle

His practice includes a broad range of environmental litigation and regulation as well as natural resource experience. He handles regulatory matters involving natural resource damage claims, Endangered Species Act matters, toxic tort suits including Superfund, RCRA, Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act, water rights and issues dealing with natural resources owned or claimed by Indian tribes.

Valerie A. Lee, President
Environment International Ltd., Seattle

She has over 25 years of experience as an environmental mediator, attorney, and engineer. She has managed and facilitated experts to determine the extent of environmental injury from pollution and to develop innovative plans for restoration. She also supervised investigations concerning liability and cost allocation at Superfund sites.

Ordering

Online CLE

Includes audio streaming of full program plus handouts (available 24 hours after live seminar).

CLE: Pre-approved for participatory or non-traditional/alternate format credit in: CA, HI*, NY*, WV*. Pre-approved for self-study credit in: AK, AZ, MO, MT, TX, VT, WA.
Upon request, also available in: CO, CT*, FL, GA, ID, KY, LA, ME, NC, ND, NE, NH, NM, NV, OR*, SC, TN, UT, WI*, WY. If you are applying for credit in one of these states, make sure to select those states when placing your order.
(*Indicates that Strafford must report attendance.)

Online CLE Audio $148.50
Available 24 hours after the live event