For this week’s Guest Post Friday here at Construction Law Musings, we welcome Nathan B. Hinch. Nate (@nathanhinch) is an associate attorney at Mueller & Reece, LLC in Bloomington, Illinois, where he advises real estate, construction, environmental, and other businesses regarding the law, and represents them in conflict mitigation and resolution efforts, including arbitration, litigation, and administrative proceedings. Previously, Mr. Hinch worked in the area of operations management and environmental permitting and compliance with a multi-State civil and environmental engineering firm. He has worked with the permitting, compliance, and enforcement staffs at the U.S. EPA and environmental agencies for eleven (11) States, as well as the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning (CMAP) and various other local governments. He can be reached at nhinch@muellerreece.com .
Let’s pretend for a moment that YOU are the lawyer in two scenarios involving clients who have received Notice of Violation (NOV) letters from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) or State environmental agency:
Client A, Mr. Casual, walks into your office, casually hands you the NOV letter and tells you, “I received this letter from the EPA a month ago. It says I needed to respond by last week, but I don’t think it’s a big deal. I’ve already fixed the problem on my own. They’re probably too busy to worry about me anyway; I mean they must send out thousands of these letters, are they really going to try to enforce this?”
Client B, Ms. Outraged, storms into your office and, while pacing back and forth and waving the letter around, tells you “I got this letter from the EPA this morning saying I’ve violated the law and could be fined all kinds of money and thrown in jail! This is an outrage! I’m going to call over there and give them a piece of my mind! How dare they threaten me with this! I’m going to call my Congresswoman Jones and Senator Smith and demand that they do something about this. I want you to fight this all the way to the Supreme Court!”
How would you counsel Mr. Casual? Ms. Outraged? These examples might sound facetious, but they are intended to show somewhat extreme examples of two client types lawyers encounter all the time. In business and even in the civil litigation context, these clients may well be able to use these tactics to their advantage. When it comes to dealing with the EPA though, both approaches are likely to harm the client’s case and make your job as their attorney more difficult, ultimately costing the client money.
