Multi-State Insurance Claim Litigation Support

Ninyo & Moore was initially retained on behalf of a major insurance company to provide environmental engineering services regarding a multi-billion dollar national insurance claim. Our assignment was later expanded to provide services to three other legal firms representing other insurance companies. Our work was developed to support mediation efforts in the case. A large portion of Ninyo & Moore's work involved third-party review of environmental records. The records reviewed covered 14 major industrial facilities located in 5 western states. A total of 353 environmental documents prepared by 45 consultants and 14 regulatory agencies were reviewed. These reviews had to be completed in a short time frame to meet the deadlines of the court-mandated mediation meetings. Our review included regulatory status of the site, cleanup status of the site, sufficiency of remedial investigations, applicability of proposed remedial actions, constructability of proposed remedial actions, alleged third-party claims, nature of regulatory orders, adequacy of investigations, applicable regulatory requirements, completed and proposed remedial actions, and cost estimates for these remedial actions. We then independently evaluated cleanup requirements for each site, considering the jurisdictional differences versus application of the most restrictive jurisdiction requirements to all of the sites, and used the collected information to conduct feasibility studies for remediation of each site. Finally, we selected applicable remedial actions to adequately cleanup each of the subareas of each site. We developed work plans for accomplishing these cleanups, and we estimated costs for accomplishing these cleanups. Our summary report in part presented claimed costs and our interpretation of potentially recoverable costs based on covered and non-covered costs, realistic future costs, and deletion of duplicate costs.