Environmental Liability and Insurance Recovery is for the lawyer whose practice lies at the point where two areas of the legal profession - environmental law and insurance law - intersect. These areas of the law demand the mastery of an intricately involved set of concepts, definitions, rules, and regulations - all of which are continuously developing. Insightful clarification on the topic is provided, as well as subset of the legal issues at the crossroads of environmental law and insurance law, namely, the many ways in which a party may be exposed to environmental liability and how insurance coverage may provide financial support for such liability. Topics covered include: -Statutory Liability, related to: CERCLA, the Resource Conservation & Recovery Act, clean air and clean water acts -Tort Liability including nuisance, trespass, negligence, and strict liability -The General Liability Policy -Policy exclusions and defenses to coverage -Environmental impairment liability insurance
Can insurance be used as a means to obtain compliance with environmental policy? Answering this question requires examination of a broad mosaic of academic issues, including current systems available for providing compensation and deterrence, use of contracts (including insurance) as substitutes for tort law, limitations of regulatory policy-making by government agencies, pre-conditions for creation of insurance products, and market mechanisms necessary for insurance to be purchased or sold. The purpose of Managing Environmental Risk Through Insurance is to highlight the potential role that insurance and performance standards can play in managing environmental risk. Insurance can play a significant role in dealing with one of the most problematic issues facing society today - how to compensate for environmental exposures. This book analyzes the ability of insurance to play a role in managing environmental risk. It begins by outlining the role insurance plays in society in contrast to other societal tools for addressing risk: government benefit programs and imposition of involuntary liability using the court system. By so doing, the book describes the comparative advantages of insurance. The book then analyzes the insurability of the risks. Finally, the book applies the insurability analysis to three concrete environmental examples.
There is a growing interest at different decision-making levels (EU, international and national) in using liability as an element in solving the legal problems of environmental harm. The interest is founded on the necessity to take into account of complex inter-dependencies and interrelationships between the environmental media at global, regional and national levels. In an effort to implement the aims of sustainable development, new views of the traditional liability instrument have to be applied. The book focuses on the Environmental Liability Directive 2004/35/EC (the so-called “ELD”) on the prevention and remedying of environmental damage, and evaluates as to whether the ELD has achieved its goals and maintained its ambitions in terms of environmental protection, and what the optimal level of harmonization in terms of environmental protection is. In order to address the question of research of this book, an interdisciplinary framework of analysis and methodology combining political science and law are developed. Since environmental damage is a multidimensional and multidisciplinary problem, par excellence, a multidisciplinary approach is required. Consequently, the use of a multidisciplinary method, combining together in a systematic and rigorous fashion, law, political science, technical elements of economy, insurance law and natural science, is, in the research design of this study, necessary, in a view of tackling the topic in a scientific problem solving-oriented approach. The book draws the overall conclusions by suggesting proposals for amendments and recommendations to be utilized for possible redrafting of the ELD’s provisions for the time when the ELD will be object of a procedure of revision. This book will be of interest to practitioners in EU law and EU Environmental law, international environmental law, legal experts on the law of environmental liability, specialists within international organizations but also by political scientists, economists, insurance law specialists, and natural scientists.
A report written by two environmental lawyers which explains the responsibilities of company directors under UK and European environmental law, and their potential personal liabilities. It sets out what steps to take to avert liabilities and what to do in the event of environmental problems, including chapters on whistle-blowing by employees and liabilities for overseas activities.
A sharp, informed and thoroughly practical guide to contemporary and developing issues relating to sea pollution, prepared by leading academics and practitioners with everyday hands-on experience. Pollution at Sea focuses on a number of the vital private law issues – compensation, insurance, contract and tort – thrown up by contemporary developments in the law of pollution. The book also intends to offer a critical analysis on emerging public law concepts, such as the legal position of seafarers from the perspective of criminal law in cases of pollution and the impact of port state control as a pollution control mechanism. Pollution at Sea is divided into three parts: 1. Private Law Liability Regimes 2. Rights and Liabilities of Particular Parties 3. The Impact of Public Law on the Actors Concerned In part 1; various liability regimes are dissected, including those which have been under the spotlight in recent years. This section has particular international appeal, and many of the regimes discussed are based at least in part on international conventions, agreements or practices. In part 2; the impact of pollution at sea on third parties is considered, with respect to the legal position of parties that might be perused either by the victims of pollution incidents or in some cases by the parties liable by way of a recourse action. Finally in part 3; recent relevant developments, particularly in the realm of public law are covered.
Financial Reporting of Environmental Liabilities and Risks is a complete guide to developing the underlying business systems to successfully report environmental matters in audited financial statements and reports filed with the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC). It sets forth relevant reporting and internal control standards and discusses important issues affecting reporting entities, accountants, lawyers, and environmental professionals.
Communities around the United States face the threat of being underwater. This is not only a matter of rising waters reaching the doorstep. It is also the threat of being financially underwater, owning assets worth less than the money borrowed to obtain them. Many areas around the country may become economically uninhabitable before they become physically unlivable. In Underwater, Rebecca Elliott explores how families, communities, and governments confront problems of loss as the climate changes. She offers the first in-depth account of the politics and social effects of the U.S. National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP), which provides flood insurance protection for virtually all homes and small businesses that require it. In doing so, the NFIP turns the risk of flooding into an immediate economic reality, shaping who lives on the waterfront, on what terms, and at what cost. Drawing on archival, interview, ethnographic, and other documentary data, Elliott follows controversies over the NFIP from its establishment in the 1960s to the present, from local backlash over flood maps to Congressional debates over insurance reform. Though flood insurance is often portrayed as a rational solution for managing risk, it has ignited recurring fights over what is fair and valuable, what needs protecting and what should be let go, who deserves assistance and on what terms, and whose expectations of future losses are used to govern the present. An incisive and comprehensive consideration of the fundamental dilemmas of moral economy underlying insurance, Underwater sheds new light on how Americans cope with loss as the water rises.
Liability and Environment analyzes the role of law, in particular civil liability, in controlling environmental pollution and risk. In modern environmental policy, liability has become a popular instrument. In this book, Prof. Bergkamp takes a fresh look at civil liability for environmental harm in an inter- and transnational context. Over the last decade, industry's liability exposure for environmental harm has expanded significantly. At the international, EC, and national level proposals for onerous strict environmental liability regimes are pending. The `polluter pays principle', which is an articulation of the `cost internalization' theory in the environmental area, is believed to justify such liability regimes. Applying an instrumental approach to legal instruments, Prof. Bergkamp aims to redefine the role of liability in the heavily regulated environmental area. He shows that liability for environmental harm is not justified by the polluter pays principle, is an uncertain and unreliable instrument for achieving prevention, results in an inefficient insurance scheme, and plays a dubious role in adjusting activity levels. Based on an analysis of the basic characteristics of alternative legal instruments, Prof. Bergkamp concludes that civil liability should play a more modest, limited role in an environmental law system dominated by public law. Where deterrence is not the objective, first party insurance, compensation funds, or other public law regimes should be preferred over liability rules. In addition to civil liability of private parties, Liability and Environment discusses State liability under international, EC, and national law. Under international law, breach of a primary obligation triggers a State's liability. Prof. Bergkamp argues that this rule should be applied also to liability of private parties. In the environmental area, a business' primary obligations are spelled out in detailed permit conditions, regulations, and statutes. According to Prof. Bergkamp, only if a primary obligation is breached, a private person should be liable for environmental harm. The system that Bergkamp advocates is an objective fault liability regime, in which public environmental law defines the standard of care for both government and industry. "In rebuilding our civil liability system, we should keep in mind that what is good for industry should be good for everyone (or it is not good for anyone), we should keep in mind that what is good for private parties should be good for the state (or it is not good for either). In rebuilding our civil liability system, the international law of State responsibility, which is unpolluted by risk spreading and activity level considerations, will guide us a long way." This book is aimed at advanced law students, academic scholars, and practitioners. In addition, it will be of interest to policy and legislative analysts, legislators, and government officials. Professor Bergkamp's book cannot be described as "solving" the problems of legal and regulatory control of environmental harm, whether within a nation or internationally. As suggested before, however, the very idea of a "solution" is illusory. All legal and regulatory regimes around the world are today and will remain for the future in a state of perpetually continuing development. The virtue of this fine book is that it moves the process of that development forward by a very substantial measure. from the Foreword by George L. Priest.
