Environmental Justice and Biden Executive Orders: Addressing Climate Change, Ensuring Access to Clean Air and Water

Ms. Otum focuses her practice on complex environmental litigation and regulatory compliance counseling. During her more than 16 years of experience representing corporate clients in a variety of environmental regulatory compliance, litigation and transactional matters spanning multiple jurisdictions, Ms. Otum has counseled clients in high-stakes matters, compliance and enforcement actions, contaminated site cleanups, superfund cost recovery actions, industrial site remediation, toxic tort litigation, land purchase and divestitures, worker safety issues, and corporate successor liability issues. She has worked directly with officials from multiple state and federal agencies to resolve enforcement and compliance matters, primarily under the RCRA, the CAA, and CERCLA. Ms. Otum’s experience also encompasses regularly advising clients on environmental aspects of corporate transactions, including identifying and evaluating environmental liabilities associated with manufacturing facilities, negotiating and drafting environmental provisions in corporate agreements, and advising clients on environmental insurance, public relations and development activities.

Mr. Brusslan leads the firm's Environmental Law practice. He has more than 25 years of experience representing corporate clients, government bodies, and citizens in complex environmental litigation and counseling matters. He has won significant environmental cases in federal courts, was counsel of record in a case before the U.S. Supreme Court, and has filed suits under virtually all environmental laws. With his extensive litigation background, Mr. Brusslan assists clients in their transactional matters by recognizing how their everyday decisions regarding environmental issues will play out in the courtroom, if necessary in the future.  As a former attorney with the U.S. EPA, he has the knowledge to help clients efficiently address environmental matters with government bodies. Mr. Brusslan regularly speaks before groups such as the American Bar Association and Northwestern University School of Law on environmental citizen suits and a variety of other environmental issues.

Mr. Freeman is a member of the firm’s Environment & Natural Resources and Government Contracts groups. He brings two decades of diverse experience advising clients in the energy, maritime, and aerospace and defense industries on a range of issues, with a primary emphasis on matters involving enforcement defense, litigation, and risk management. Mr. Freeman routinely advises clients in response to investigations by, or inquiries from, a range of regulators, primarily the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), and also including the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the Internal Revenue Service, the U.S. Department of Defense Inspector General, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and state attorneys general.