Kenneth A. Reich is an experienced lawyer with a national practice. He concentrates in environmental and energy law. He also counsels and represents clients on local, state and federal regulatory matters, handles administrative and civil litigation and provides general corporate and transactional advice.
Mr. Reich has managed significant matters on behalf of the federal government as well as in the private sector on behalf of corporate, institutional, public and individual clients. He brings this wealth of experience to bear to provide his clients with high quality legal representation.
General Description of Practice
Mr. Reich has had a distinguished career practicing law in the public and private sector. After graduation from Harvard Law School he was a staff attorney with the Atlanta Legal Aid Society and thereafter joined the Baltimore, MD law firm of Piper and Marbury (now known as DLA Piper), where he eventually headed up their pro bono office.
From 1979–86 he served as a trial attorney, then Assistant Chief of the Environmental Enforcement Section, U.S. Department of Justice in Washington, D.C., where he litigated as well as supervised a number of complex, precedential cases in the federal courts and worked on policy issues.
Mr. Reich received a number of awards and honors during his tenure at Justice.
Following his service at the Department of Justice, Mr. Reich relocated to Boston, where he practiced with several prominent regional and national law firms, concentrating in environmental and energy law and civil litigation.
Mr. Reich formed his own firm in 2010 in order to provide his clients with high-quality legal representation without the expensive overhead and bureaucracy of a large firm.
Mr. Reich has represented a broad range of national as well as regional clients, providing them with legal services in the fields of environmental law, including advice on Climate Change regulations and potential regulations; environmental, health and safety, including OSHA; environmental litigation, including defense of governmental enforcement actions and representation of plaintiffs and defendants in private litigation; Superfund matters; energy, including traditional and alternative energy; federal, state and local regulatory advice and representation; general civil litigation; commercial leasing and general corporate matters.
His practice includes counseling, litigation and transactional matters.
His Of Counsel, Stephen J. Reich, has an office in Boston and NYC and concentrates his practice in IP (copyrights and trademarks) and civil litigation and assists the firm with environmental and other complex civil litigation.
The law firm has a network of experienced attorneys across the country, in the areas, among others, of real estate, bankruptcy, taxation, including international tax, business, finance, employment law, patents and government investigations/prosecutions, to whom it can refer clients, as well as a deep bench of individual or small firm lawyers, whom it retains on an as-needed basis for litigation or other resource-intensive matters.
Mr. Reich is a trained, experienced mediator and a trained arbitrator (formerly a member of the commercial litigation arbitration panel of the AAA). He Is a panelist with Central Massachusetts Mediation and Arbitration.
www.cmassmediation.com. He formerly served on a Boston Bar Association panel of lawyers offering pro-bono evaluation and mediation services to parties and their counsel in the Boston Municipal (District) Court. He is an appointed member of the Dispute Resolution Council of the Massachusetts Bar Assn. and has been a panelist and moderator on several programs co-hosted by the Council.
In addition to his law practice, Mr. Reich is the principal of Kenneth Reich Strategic Consulting Services, which provides consulting services in the areas of environmental law and policy and energy policy.
Representative matters include:
- While at the Department of Justice, acted as lead counsel on behalf of the U.S. EPA in a broad variety of cases arising under the federal Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, CERCLA (Superfund Act), RCRA, TSCA and other major federal statutes in federal district courts around the country and achieved major precedential settlements/verdicts.
- Representation of a public company in a complex, multi-party private Superfund action in federal district court (pending) involving solvent contamination, where there are significant issues concerning the necessity of costs under CERCLA, causation and ultimate responsibility for the investigation and cleanup costs. In a companion case Mr. Reich briefed and argued in the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals the issue of whether plaintiff’s costs were “necessary” for purposes of CERCLA.
- Representation of a rural electric cooperative in successfully obtaining a favorable federal/state EIS and a major air permit for its proposed electric energy project, including defending the federal, state and administrative litigation filed by the project’s opponents. Major environmental law issues included adverse (visual) impacts to a national historic landmark; whether CO2 was (at the time) a regulated pollutant under the state and federal clean air acts; the federal and state requirements for a BACT analysis of small particulate matter controls, for which Mr. Reich was lead counsel in a three-day evidentiary hearing; and mercury impacts, regulation and control.
- Filing of an amicus curiae brief before USEPA’s Environmental Appeals Board on the then-open issue of the regulation of CO2 under the federal Clean Air Act.
- Representation of a major national corporation in defense of enforcement proceedings by USEPA, including protracted negotiations leading to a precedential national judicial consent decree requiring payment of a civil penalty, establishment of a company-wide environmental compliance and audit program, and performance of an innovative supplemental environmental project.
- Successful jury verdict in Massachusetts Superior Court on behalf of an owner of contaminated property against the prior owner related to an abandoned leaking underground tank, including award of past and future damages, costs and interest.
- Representation of a national bank in negotiations with the state department of environmental protection and the state attorney general’s office in cleaning up a contaminated industrial site under the brownfields program, converting it to a model recreation complex and obtaining protection from further liability for the site.
- Representation of a major national transportation company in obtaining state certification of emission reduction credits as a result of its fuel conversion from diesel to electric.
- Representation of a manufacturer in connection with an ammonia release that potentially threatened the safety of workers and the surrounding community, and in dealing with the myriad federal, state and local investigative and enforcement agencies, including OSHA and EPA.
- Provided a second opinion on the merits of major Superfund litigation against the United States to a major corporation and its outside counsel.
- Expert witness in divorce litigation on issues related to the value of assets in the marital estate: a contaminated facility and potential liability in a Superfund case related to alleged shipments from the same facility.
- Advice to a national alternative energy company in reporting potential environmental law violations pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of USEPA’s Audit Policy and in setting up a nationwide audit program pursuant to that Policy.
- Representation of individual and group PRP’s in major Superfund cleanup cases and in related litigation.
- Counsel to an international company in defense of equipment lease litigation that was favorably resolved.
- Successful representation of an individual plaintiff in a copyright infringement case against a major corporation.
Professional Activities
Mr. Reich frequently speaks and writes on energy and environmental topics and has been quoted in the national media and trade press. He issues periodic updates on breaking issues in national environmental and energy policy and regulation. Recent updates may be found on his LinkedIn page.
In addition to articles and speaking engagements, Mr. Reich previously authored several versions of the chapter on the “Massachusetts Clean Air Act”, Massachusetts Environmental Law (MCLE) and the chapter, “Developments in Criminal and Civil Enforcement under Key Environmental Statutes”, Environmental Risk Management, A Desk Reference, ed. Eric B. Rothenberg and Dean Jeffery Telego (RTM Communications, Inc., 1991).
A long-standing and active member of the ABA’s Section of Environment, Energy and Resources, Mr. Reich also served as co-chair of the Environmental Litigation Committee and as co-founder and co-chair of the Clean Air Committee of the Boston Bar Association.
For a number of years, he was adjunct faculty at the Boston University School of Law, where he taught a seminar on hot topics in environmental law and a practical-skills-oriented course on alternative dispute resolution, including mock negotiations and mediation.
Bar Admissions and Education
Mr. Reich is admitted to practice law in Massachusetts, the District of Columbia, Maryland (inactive) and Montana (inactive). He is also admitted in a number of federal appellate and district courts.
He is a graduate of Harvard Law School (J.D. cum laude) and Cornell University (B.A. in Government).
