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Course Details

Course Information
  • smart_display Format

    On-Demand

  • signal_cellular_alt Difficulty Level

    Intermediate

  • work Practice Area

    Environmental

Date & Time
  • event Date

    Thursday, July 20, 2023

  • schedule Time

    1:00 p.m. ET./10:00 a.m. PT

  • timer Program Length

    90 minutes

Credit Information

  • This 90-minute webinar is eligible in most states for 1.5 CLE credits.

$297.00
CLE
ALL

This CLE course will review both traditional and evolving environmental insurance products (e.g., pollution legal liability, cost cap, and excess of indemnity), escrows, contractual liability transfers, and other tools in the context of the cleanup and/or transfer of contaminated properties.

Faculty

Lawrence P. Schnapf
Principal
Schnapf LLC, LLC

Mr. Schnapf primarily concentrates on environmental risks associated with corporate, real estate and brownfield transactions; commercial financing including asset-based lending, syndicated loans, mezzanine loans and distressed debt; and bankruptcy, workouts and corporate restructuring. He has extensive experience with brownfield redevelopment and financing, including representing affordable housing developers and assisting local development corporations or not-for-profit organizations with their brownfield planning programs. Mr. Schnapf also counsels clients on environmental, represents clients in federal and state environmental litigation, enforcement actions, administrative proceedings and private cost recovery actions. He is a past Chair of the Environmental Law Section of the NYSBA, Co-Chair of the NYSBA brownfield task force, and former Co-Chair of the NYSBA Hazardous Site Remediation Committee. Mr. Schnapf is a past Chair of the ABA Section of Business Law Committee on Environmental, Energy and Natural Resources Law and a Vice Chair of the ABA Section of Environment, Energy and Resources. He has also served on a number of ASTM Task Groups, including Chair of the legal subcommittee for the ASTM E1527  task force responsible for the 2013 and 2021 revisions to ASTM E1527 phase 1 standard and was Co-Chair of the legal sub-committee for the ASTM Vapor Intrusion Task Group.

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William J. Squires
Member
Mintz Levin Cohn Ferris Glovsky & Popeo PC

Mr. Squires counsels corporations, developers, manufacturers, private equity firms, lenders, and individuals in litigation, transactional, and regulatory settings. He represents clients in disputes under state and federal law pertaining to releases of oil and hazardous materials — including PFAS and other emerging contaminants — and works closely with environmental consultants, Massachusetts licensed site professionals, engineers, risk assessors, geologists, and other experts in responding to such releases. Mr. Squires represents clients in state and federal courts and regularly appears before regulatory agencies and municipal boards.

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Description

Counsel for all stakeholders with interest in contaminated properties: real estate, environmental, and bankruptcy counsel serving industrial clients, governments, Brownfield developers, remediation contractors, and PRP groups can benefit from quantifying and even reducing cleanup costs in a manner that is accurate, efficient, and will hold over time.

Contaminated properties present multiple financial risks: (1) costs for unknown pollutants and otherwise unanticipated remediation; (2) cost overruns for expected remediation; and (3) toxic tort and other private, third-party claims. For 20 years, parties relied on pollution legal liability insurance and, until 2011, on "cost cap" insurance to address these risks.

When traditional insurers stopped offering cost cap insurance in 2011, the environmental risk transfer industry developed alternative cost cap structures, as well as excess of indemnity insurance. Escrows, captives, trusts, annuities, and letters of credit work in conjunction with insurance to collateralize risk.

Listen as our panel composed of attorneys and insurance representatives discusses these tools as they have arisen and evolved over the last 20 years.

Outline

  1. Use of environmental insurance and other risk transfer tools to support fixed-price cleanups and purchases/sales of contaminated properties
    1. Why use
    2. When to use
    3. How to use
    4. Advantages and disadvantages
  2. Mechanics of tools
  3. Lessons learned

Benefits

The panel will review these and other key issues:

  • How can costs be best quantified and fixed?
  • How can costs be best reduced?
  • How can cleanup quality be best improved?
  • What are the opportunities (and best means) of negotiating and scripting favorable language in policies, escrows, and other risk management tools?
  • What are the challenges and pitfalls of using the various tools?