DGS is known for its expertise in and successful defense of environmental toxic tort actions involving personal injury, medical monitoring and/or property damage claims. We represent defendants ranging from the local convenience store to Fortune 100 companies in these cases. We have successfully defended cases brought by plaintiff classes, bellwether plaintiffs, and individual or small groups of plaintiffs. These cases involve claims alleging common law torts, unjust enrichment, and violations of federal and state environmental statutes. Some also include claims under citizen suit provisions in environmental statutes.

We are staffed with some of the best environmental attorneys in the country, several of whom have significant trial experience in environmental toxic tort cases. As a group and as individuals, they are focused on minimizing the costs of defending these cases, reaching timely settlements where appropriate, and winning the cases that cannot be settled appropriately.

We have a wealth of knowledge and experience in litigating claims pertaining to claimed exposures to chemicals via ingestion of water from public or private water supplies, dermal contact with water, dust or soils, and inhalation of dust and vapors including indoor air/vapor intrusion. Substances at issue in one or more of these cases include chlorinated solvents (PCE, TCE, TCA, and DCE), nitrates, metals and/or petroleum hydrocarbons. Many of our cases concern property damage claims based on spills or other releases of chemicals into the environment.

Recently, we successfully defended more than 20 toxic tort chlorinated solvent personal injury cases filed in federal and state courts in Colorado against a Fortune 100 company.

We have defended more than 25 toxic tort property damage cases, and have tried two of these cases in which the juries returned verdicts of no loss of property value. One of the these jury trials was a class action, and the other was a trial of bellwether claims for a group of more than 100 plaintiffs.

In defending these cases, our lawyers draw upon their prior training in the sciences and economics as well as the experience they have gained by working closely with hydrogeologists, environmental engineers, chemists, economists, appraisers, experts in standard of care for various industries, toxicologists, epidemiologists and physicians with a wide range of specialties.