Environmental Business Journal: What emerging trends are you observing in environmental litigation, particularly in relation to toxic torts and product liability cases?
Kegan Brown: There are three notable recent trends for environmental, toxic tort, and products liability litigation.
First, there continues to be intense regulatory attention on, and public scrutiny of, perceived chemicals of emerging concern, such as PFAS, 6PPD, and ethylene oxide, even though the existence of these chemicals, or classes of chemicals, in operations and commerce are not new. Unfortunately, in some situations where scientifically supported risk information is not yet available, there seems to be a trend towards commencing litigation based on the premise that the mere exposure to a particular chemical, in and of itself, reflects an unreasonable risk.
Environmental consulting & engineering firms grew more than 10% in 2022 and 2023, and likely will in 2024 when the final tally is complete. These were the first years of consecutive doubledigit growth rates since the late 1980s post RCRA and CERCLA era, a more impressive feat now that the U.S. environmental C&E industry will surpass $50 billion in 2025. Sustaining this growth has been infrastructure funding and domestic energy production which looks sure to continue; voluntary ESG and PFAS and other environmental liability investments that may not be on such firm ground in the short term; and climate risk and energy transition investments that may waver in 2025, but are the foundation of another decade or two of growth for professional services firms focused on energy, climate and the environment.
EBJ's 2023 review of the Environmental Consulting & Engineering industry summarized these and other positive attributes of the C&E business and reminisced that 'the good times are here again', but pondered the question of just how long the good times would last. And with 11% growth in 2023 and tracking on 10% in
2024, the high-growth times are still here. We can define good times for an industry as annual growth rates at or near double digits, although we can't dispute that ready access to capital, resources and talent—as
well as progressive government policy, are also be part of the equation in the environmental industry.
Reprinted with permission from Environmental Business Journal, Volume 37, Numbers 11/12: Q4 2024
The Environmental Consulting & Engineering Industry 2024
