Skip to main content
Edit Page - Admin Only Style Guide - Admin Only Control Panel - Admin Only
environmental

Environmental

Using specialized expertise, thematic storytelling, and powerful visuals, IMS helps legal teams clarify time, terrain, and technology in complex environmental cases. From early case assessment through trial, arbitration, and appeal, we work alongside clients on cost recovery, toxic tort, legacy, and coverage disputes across the US and internationally.

Trust our team to help your case land with today’s decision-makers.

Keys to liability in environmental disputes can lie in operational reporting, far before anyone enters the courtroom. Causation may depend on how contaminants move through soil, groundwater, and air. Damages could hinge on remediation science, regulatory standards, and cost models that opposing experts interpret differently.

Audience bias experiences similar shifts. Jurors increasingly doubt that regulatory compliance means a site or product is safe. Many arrive skeptical of both corporations and agencies such as the EPA. Winning means pairing exact science with themes that address those attitudes.

IMS supports plaintiff and defense counsel, insurers, and corporate legal teams through every stage of environmental litigation, including matters such as:

  • CERCLA/Superfund cost recovery and contribution actions
  • Toxic tort and mass exposure claims, including water contamination, PFAS, and lead
  • Legacy oil and gas and landowner remediation suits
  • Environmental insurance coverage and allocation disputes
  • Government and citizen enforcement actions
  • Industrial incidents, spills, and chemical releases
  • International and investor-state arbitration over mining, energy, and natural resources

With experience in 70,000+ cases, including some of the largest environmental matters on record, we know where these cases are won and lost. Read more below about how our expert sourcing and consulting teams work together to help clients succeed.

iStock-1483521972

From Site History to Verdict: Integrated Environmental Litigation Support Services

Environmental matters often move slowly, then all at once. IMS partners with your team throughout the dispute lifecycle, so early work is ready when the case accelerates.

Preliminarily, our expert advisors can assess a dispute's technical merits and weaknesses before positions harden. Our expert witness search team then secures hydrogeologists, toxicologists, and remediation engineers to meet the record demands. As the case develops, jury research shows how local jurors react to exposure claims and compliance defenses. Those findings shape case theme refinement, witness preparation, and presentation strategy.

Our trial consultants and graphic designers turn sampling data, site histories, and plume models into custom graphics, complex maps, 3D animations, and interactive timelines to show jurors how environmental conditions, contaminant migration, and alleged impacts connect to the facts of the case. The same work supports mediation, arbitration, and settlement, so you are hearing-ready at every point. In every setting, our presentation technology team keeps the evidence moving.

iStock-1160135293

IMS Environmental Expertise in Action: Featured Case Studies

Vermilion Parish School Board v. Louisiana Land and Exploration Co.

Plaintiffs in a Louisiana legacy lawsuit sought more than $100 million over decades of oil and gas operations at a wetland field. IMS consultants worked with trial counsel and the scientific experts from early case development through closing argument, sharpening the defense's arguments and building its trial graphics. After a three-week trial, the jury returned a sweeping defense verdict in under four hours.

Read the Case Study

Deepwater Horizon Litigation

IMS built dozens of complex animations and hundreds of graphics for Anadarko Petroleum, a non-operating partner in the Macondo Well. They walked jurors through drilling, cementing, testing, safety culture, and a minute-by-minute account of the events leading up to the blowout. Anadarko settled with BP for far less than the 25% share of cleanup costs its contract assigned.

Read the Case Study

Comprehensive Environmental Litigation Capabilities

  • Toxic Tort & Exposure Litigation

    IMS secures medical toxicology, epidemiology, and exposure-science experts to help jurors understand whether a contaminant reached plaintiff classes at doses that matter and caused their injuries. Alongside experts, we support legal teams with jury research capabilities to show the impacts of fear of water, air, and soil contamination that drives damages, so you can address it before trial. 

  • CERCLA Cost Recovery & Contribution

    Superfund disputes may involve dozens of parties, decades of operations, and complex disagreements over who pays what share of the cleanup. IMS helps allocation teams organize site histories, ownership records, and response costs into Chronos® interactive timelines and complex maps. Mediators, allocators, and courts can then see each party's footprint at a glance.

  • Legacy Oil & Gas and Remediation Disputes

    Legacy suits ask adjudicators to judge operations that sometimes began generations ago and weigh them against today's remediation standards. IMS works with your experts to reconstruct historic practices, show the actual extent of impacts, and test competing remediation plans with mock jurors. Our trial graphics and economic damages work show where a reasonable cleanup ends and an inflated one begins.

  • Environmental Insurance Coverage

    Coverage disputes add policy language, trigger, and allocation questions to an already technical record. IMS helps insurers and policyholders explain when damage occurred and why, using 3D models and photo timelines like those in Canadian Natural Resources v. Oil Insurance Ltd.. Our economics and finance experts address the damages and allocation models.

  • Regulatory & Enforcement Actions

    Government and citizen-suit actions often hinge on permit terms, monitoring data, and whether the defendant did enough, not just the legal minimum. As public trust in regulators shifts, IMS helps teams avoid relying on compliance alone. We build themes and voir dire strategies that respond to juror skepticism of both agencies and industry.

  • Industrial Incidents, Spills & Releases

    Following a spill, explosion, or chemical release, the sequence of events define a case. IMS reconstructs incidents minute by minute through 2D and 3D animation and Chronos®, as we did across hundreds of graphics in the Deepwater Horizon litigation. Witness preparation readies corporate representatives to credibly explain safety culture and response decisions.

  • International & Natural Resources Arbitration

    Tribunals in mining, energy, and investor-state disputes expect precise, well-organized technical evidence across language and legal traditions. IMS builds physical models, interactive maps, and hearing presentations that tribunals and opposing experts rely on. Our presentation technology team supports hearings in the US, UK, and beyond.

  • Environmental Expert Witness Search & Technical Tutorials

    Environmental specialties are narrow, and conflicts are common in searches for experts in environmental litigation. Drawing on 30+ years of relationships and search process enhancements, IMS finds and vets technical experts in environmental engineering, hydrogeology, toxicology, air dispersion, climate science, and much more. We then help them distill expertise through technology tutorials that judges and jurors understand.

A big thanks to the IMS team. The soil conditioning community is pretty small and insular, so finding this expert was a big win.

Trial Attorney

Our discussions with the jury after the verdict revealed that IMS’s work had a major impact on how the jury viewed the case and it helped them to see the dispute from our client’s perspective.

Partner, Am Law 50 Firm

Case Studies

Related Industry Insights

Energy-Arbitration-Requires-Clarity_2609_Preview

09.10.26

Article |

Related Industry Insights

Energy Arbitration Requires Clarity: The Strategic Value of Visual Advocacy

Featured-Image-The-Waters-Fine_2412

01.06.25

Article |

Related Industry Insights

The Water’s Fine? Navigating Water Contamination Litigation

Industrial-Disasters_2407_v2-03

07.24.24

Article |

Related Industry Insights

Industrial Disasters Are Derailing the EPA—and Defendants with It

Article-Header-Image-e1703878978493

01.03.24

Article |

Related Industry Insights

The Crucial Role of Expert Evidence in Complex International Arbitration

IMS Insights graphic header, background image of wire bound notebook with ink pen laying on it.

08.05.21

Article |

Related Industry Insights

Key Issues in Lead Paint Litigation

IMS Insights graphic header, background image of wire bound notebook with ink pen laying on it.

06.15.20

Article |

Related Industry Insights

Tips for Defending Consolidated Cases

FAQs

An environmental expert witness analyzes site, sampling, and operational data and gives opinions on contamination, exposure, causation, remediation, or regulatory compliance. IMS finds and vets environmental engineers, hydrogeologists, toxicologists, and other specialists, then helps them explain their findings clearly through testimony, tutorials, and trial graphics.

IMS supports toxic tort and exposure claims, CERCLA/Superfund cost recovery and contribution actions, legacy oil and gas suits, environmental insurance coverage disputes, regulatory and citizen enforcement actions, industrial incident litigation, and international natural resources arbitration. We work with plaintiff and defense counsel, insurers, and corporate legal teams.

Contamination cases provoke strong emotions, and many jurors no longer see regulatory compliance as proof of safety. IMS jury consulting uses mock trials, focus groups, and supplemental juror questionnaires to identify these attitudes early. We then build themes and voir dire strategies that address them.

Environmental evidence spans decades, depths, and distances that are hard to picture. IMS trial graphics, complex maps, 3D animation, and Chronos® interactive timelines show how contaminants moved, how a site changed, or how an incident unfolded. Judges, juries, mediators, and arbitrators can follow and remember that evidence.

The earlier the better. Early case assessment and expert selection shape pleadings, discovery, and settlement value. IMS also joins matters on short notice for expert searches, mock trials, or trial presentation support.

Yes. IMS supports domestic and international arbitration, including investor-state, mining, energy, and insurance coverage proceedings, with experts, physical models, interactive maps, and hearing presentation support in the US, the UK, and worldwide.

Blue textured angles.

We bring a unique perspective based on decades of practical experience in 70,000+ cases spanning all industries.