Paul M. Hauge

Solutions

• Internal

Biography

Mr. Hauge is an environmental counselor and litigator with a practice focused on compliance with remediation and permitting requirements, CERCLA and Spill Act cost recovery and contribution actions, and the allocation of environmental responsibilities in the leasing and conveyance of real property. He represents clients principally in connection with sites in New Jersey and New York, ranging from small, client-owned industrial facilities to massive, multi-party disposal sites. His scientific training and experience as an environmental scientist–at a consulting firm, a public-interest organization, and the research division of the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection–enable him to provide special insights into complex environmental matters. He has also assisted clients in obtaining permitted exemptions from remediation requirements, and helped to obtain dismissal of a CERCLA claim by persuading the court to recognize the applicability of the statute’s rarely invoked “act of war” defense. In addition to litigation in both federal and state courts, Mr. Hauge represents clients in administrative proceedings, EPA investigations, brownfield disputes, and real estate transactions. His matters have involved:

• Assisting owners of contaminated sites with claims against former owners and operators responsible for the contamination
• Helping the redeveloper of a large waterfront site to obtain a host of state, federal, and interstate agency approvals for the construction of a new port and terminal facility, and successfully defending those approvals in administrative and judicial appeals
• Analyzing transactional documents for a large chemical manufacturing company to determine how they allocated site-related environmental liabilities, and helping to persuade a state court that those liabilities were not transferred to the client when it acquired another company but instead were retained by the former owners
• Protecting clients from unforeseen environmental liability through careful review and drafting of sale agreements and leases
• Helping both large and small contributors to disposal sites to minimize their allocated shares of liability
• Successfully defending a manufacturer of leather goods sued by neighbors of a former facility for alleged harms from substances used at the facility
• Evaluating the applicability of New Jersey’s Industrial Site Recovery Act (ISRA) to sites and transactions and guiding clients through the ISRA process
• Responding to Spill Act directives issued by the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection
• Coordinating the work of experts, consultants, and Licensed Site Remediation Professionals under the novel “private oversight” approach of New Jersey’s Site Remediation Reform Act
• Guiding clients through the complicated web of site remediation regulations
• Challenging agency rules and regulations
• Unraveling an unreasonable and arbitrarily administered system of municipal sewer fees on behalf of a large food-processing company

Before joining Gibbons, Mr. Hauge clerked for then-Judge Samuel A. Alito, Jr. of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, who was elevated to the United States Supreme Court in 2006. Mr. Hauge is also the author of the chapters on CERCLA and New Jersey Environmental Law in West’s annually updated Business Law Deskbook series. He has taught courses in Environmental Law and the Clean Water Act as an adjunct professor at Seton Hall University School of Law in Newark.