Zombie Corporations and CERCLA Liability: Identifying and Pursuing Zombie PRPs
Course Details
- smart_display Format
On-Demand
- signal_cellular_alt Difficulty Level
- work Practice Area
Environmental
- event Date
Tuesday, May 9, 2023
- schedule Time
1:00 p.m. ET./10:00 a.m. PT
- timer Program Length
90 minutes
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This 90-minute webinar is eligible in most states for 1.5 CLE credits.
This CLE webinar will guide counsel on identifying and pursuing defunct or "zombie" corporations and their insurance assets as a source of funding cleanup of contamination sites. The panel will discuss what to do after identifying zombie candidates, claims evaluation due diligence, litigation trends in these PRP and insurance cost recovery cases, the states where these claims are more likely to succeed, and how to manage and overcome impediments to successful recoveries.
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.
Mr. Horkovich has obtained over $8 billion in settlements and judgments from insurance companies for his clients. He is a trial lawyer with substantial experience in trying complex insurance coverage actions on behalf of corporate policyholders and governmental entities. Mr. Horkovic’s victories include one of the top 10 jury verdicts in the United States, the top insurance recovery jury verdict in the United States, seven landmark state Supreme Court decisions, eight jury verdicts and nine bench trial decisions in favor of the policyholder including engaging on several significant projects by the United Nations as its general insurance counsel and the state of California where Anderson Kill served as lead trial in the state's suit against dozens of insurance companies over coverage for cleanup of the Stringfellow Acid Pits (what a federal court described as the most complex environmental clean-up in the world). Mr. Horkovich is a frequent author and lecturer on insurance recovery topics.
As contamination site cleanup costs continue to rise, attorneys have looked to additional ways to tap into insurance coverage to pay for cleanup, including pursuing zombie corporations to reach their undistributed assets.
These dissolved corporations may have undistributed insurance assets that, with the right strategy, can be triggered and monetized to help defray cleanup costs and reduce potential CERCLA liability of other parties.
Counsel face hurdles when reviving these corporations to pursue insurance claims such as understanding what the undistributed assets are and the laws that apply, identifying whether corporations are "dead and buried" and not subject to lawsuits, triggering the insurance coverage, representing the zombie, and managing the costs of PRP and insurance claims.
Listen as our authoritative panel discusses the pursuit of zombie corporations and their insurance assets and how to manage the claims for success.
- Identifying zombie corporations
- How courts are treating zombie corporations in CERCLA litigation
- Hurdles companies and their counsel face when pursuing zombie corporations
The panel will review these and other key issues:
- Does a zombie corporation have the capacity to be sued?
- Can a party that is not an additional insured tap into the insurance policy?
- How have the courts treated the issue of suing zombies for insurance assets?
- What are best practices for discovering insurance assets?
- How can counsel for the zombie corporation defend?
