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Bonnie Allyn Barnett serves as chair of Drinker Biddle's Environmental Practice Group and has served as a managing partner in the firm. Bonnie combines an active litigation practice with general counseling on regulatory compliance issues and the environmental implications of a wide range of business and real estate transactions.
Environmental Litigation. Bonnie litigates environmental matters of all types ranging from large, multi-party clean up cases to toxic tort cases to contractual disputes over environmental liabilities.
On the clean up front, Bonnie has represented parties at sites along the east coast from New York to Florida and in the Midwest, not to mention throughout Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Bonnie has litigated a number of private party clean up matters, including a cost recovery and contract dispute over one of the largest Superfund sites in Pennsylvania. Bonnie often directs or assists in efforts to identify additional "responsible parties" at Superfund sites and is involved in questions of allocation, whether through litigation, arbitration or mediation. Bonnie has negotiated numerous consent decrees and administrative consent orders at both the federal and state level, as well as settlements in private cost recovery actions.
Bonnie defends clients in enforcement actions, both administrative and judicial, under a variety of federal and state environmental statutes, including the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, TSCA and RCRA. The government is not always the plaintiff; Bonnie defends clients in toxic tort cases arising from alleged exposure to hazardous substances.
Environmental Advice. Bonnie advises diverse types of clients from major manufacturing concerns to universities and small businesses on a full range of environmental issues. In addition to regulatory compliance questions, Bonnie routinely directs environmental assessments and audits and has worked extensively with consulting and engineering firms.
Bonnie has set up due diligence programs for lenders as well as for buyers and sellers of businesses and real property. On the industry side, Bonnie helps clients establish internal compliance auditing programs to resolve or prevent government enforcement.
In the business arena, Bonnie helps clients structure transactions to allocate the risks and costs of addressing environmental exposures. Helping clients sell or redevelop environmentally sensitive property has become an exciting part of Bonnie's practice given the focus on "Brownfields" redevelopment in Pennsylvania in the wake of Act 2.
In General. After a two-year clerkship with the Honorable James T. Giles, United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, Bonnie joined Drinker Biddle. Bonnie helped to charter the Delaware Valley Environmental Inn of Court, the first American Inn devoted to environmental issues. Bonnie served as co-chair of the Environmental Law Committee of the Philadelphia Bar Association, and frequently lectures on topics of interest in the environmental area. | 