David G. Mandelbaum

Sep 19, 2024 | law.com | David G. Mandelbaum

The federal Superfund statute allows a private person to recover “necessary costs of response incurred” by that person consistently with the governing regulation, the national contingency plan. A recent appellate decision, to be sure unreported and therefore not binding, raises the interesting question of what a person must do to “incur” a cost. The person in question was a law firm and this is an “environmental law practice” column, so the question may be doubly interesting.

Aug 13, 2024 | mondaq.com | David G. Mandelbaum

Last month, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court held that environmental groups could intervene in litigation to use the Environmental Rights Amendment of the Pennsylvania Constitution to support a regulation even though the Department of Environmental Protection had declined to make that argument. See Shirley v. Pennsylvania Legislation Reference Bureau, No. 85 MAP 2022 (Pa. July 18, 2024).

Aug 2, 2024 | law.com | David G. Mandelbaum

Last month, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court held that environmental groups could intervene in litigation to use the Environmental Rights Amendment of the Pennsylvania Constitution to support a regulation even though the Department of Environmental Protection had declined to make that argument. See Shirley v. Pennsylvania Legislation Reference Bureau, No. 85 MAP 2022 (Pa. July 18, 2024).

Jul 12, 2024 | law.com | David G. Mandelbaum

Last month, the U.S. Supreme Court decided Securities & Exchange Commission v. Jarkesy, No. 22-859 (U.S. June 27, 2024), holding that the SEC cannot assess civil penalties for securities fraud through an administrative tribunal. As the court well-understood, the decision has implications for many areas of federal regulatory enforcement, including environmental law. So what does it mean for the environmental practice? George Jarkesy committed securities fraud.

May 13, 2024 | law.com | David G. Mandelbaum

Last month at the Pennsylvania Bar Institute’s Environmental Law Forum, over 100 environmental lawyers discussed the implications of the duty of competence imposed by Rule of Professional Conduct 1.1 on their practices in light of climate change. John Dernbach first posed the issue to the forum in a keynote address a year earlier. Dernbach later published those thoughts. See Irma Russell, John C. Dernbach, and Matt Bogoshian, “The Lawyer’s Duty of Competence in a Climate-Imperiled World,” 92 U.