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Description
Cambridge Environmental provides scientific support and
expert testimony in cases of toxic tort, worker's compensation, liability
for environmental clean-up, and cost recovery. We consult on a broad range
of issues in environmental sciences and engineering, medicine, public
health, and related fields.
Typically, in a toxic tort or worker's compensation
action, a law firm will retain our services shortly after a suit has been
filed. We have also been retained beforehand, either to help attorneys
determine the scientific strengths and weaknesses of potential litigation,
or to provide scientific support during settlement talks. We ordinarily
conduct a scientific case analysis, which outlines (1) the chemicals or
other agents of concern, (2) potential routes of exposure, (3) likely
acute and chronic doses obtained by plaintiffs, (4) the potential health
risks associated with those doses, (5) known, probable, and/or suspected
causes of the health claims made or likely to be made, and (6) the
strengths and weaknesses of arguments presented by scientific and medical
experts with respect to causation. Given this foundation and our
familiarity with toxic tort litigation, we can help to design technical
strategies for arguing the merits of the client's case and for addressing
the likely counter-arguments.
Sample Projects
- Cambridge Environmental helped a defendant successfully argue a
Daubert motion by showing that the scientific testimony of the
plaintiff’s causation witness was unreliable. The case had been
brought by a young woman what had contracted leukemia and sued the
manufacturer of the cleaning fluid, perchloroethylene, used in the
dry-cleaning shop where she had briefly worked, claiming that exposure
to perchloroethylene had caused her cancer. We took the lead in
preparing a joint expert affidavit signed by one of our staff, an
epidemiologist, and a hematologist that strongly criticized the
scientific method used by the plaintiff’s expert epidemiologist.
We offered detailed testimony before the judge and the
physician-scientist she had appointed to assist her. The case was
dismissed on summary judgment.
- We provided scientific support in a series of cases brought by
owners of property along a river contaminated with PCBs released from an
upstream manufacturing facility. Property owners claimed that the very
small concentrations of PCBs found in soil on their lands rendered the
property worthless and dangerous to livestock. We assisted in the
deposition and cross-examination at trial of the plaintiffs’
environmental scientist and toxicologist, and testified, based on a
review of the scientific literature and the plaintiffs’ environmental
data, that the contamination did not pose a hazard to humans or
livestock.
- Cambridge Environmental provided consulting and testimonial
expertise in several toxic tort suits involving contamination of a
municipal water supply by the solvent trichloroethylene. Plaintiffs sued
for present injuries and fear of cancer. We worked closely with defense
attorneys to depose a dozen or so plaintiffs’ physicians and
epidemiologists, assisted in the development of expert testimony for the
defense, evaluated quantitative health risk assessments, and provided
general scientific support.
- Cambridge Environmental staff testified on behalf of a plaintiff who
was permanently injured by a bacterial infection contracted from
undercooked meat in a supermarket. We analyzed the bacteriologic
evidence, the environmental conditions permitting contamination, the
plaintiff's contact with the meat, and the course of illness. The jury
found in favor of the plaintiff.
- A manufacturer of art supplies was sued by a woman who gave birth to
a malformed infant; the plaintiff alleged that she had been exposed on
the job to one of the defendant's products and that this product was
teratogenic. We researched the toxicologic and medical literature
pertaining to the product components, researched the epidemiology of the
birth defect, quantitatively estimated the plaintiff's exposure to the
product, and testified in court on these subjects. The outcome was
favorable for the client.
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