Defending Ecological Damage Claims: A Primer

Claims alleging natural resource or ecological damage are on the rise, but the standards governing the performance of ecological risk assessments are  not nearly as developed as the standards used for evaluating human health risks. Consequently, the legal defenses to natural resource or ecological damage claims are not as well-developed as the defenses to claims of risk to human health. Increasingly, governmental entities are employing the public nuisance doctrine and other novel theories of recovery and demanding compensation from manufacturers based on their customers’ use and release of products into the environment. These lawsuits raise the nightmarish specter of unlimited financial exposure for corporate defendants under circumstances in which the legal claims are “so vague and malleable that it can accommodate almost every wrong”. I discuss these issues in a new blog article at https://ruskinlitigationblog.com/2017/11/02/defending-ecosystem-damage-claims-a-primer/