Environmental Audits: Privilege, Voluntary Disclosure and Other Legal Issues:
Ensuring Compliance With Environmental Laws, Responding When Violations Are Discovered

Environmental audits allow companies to proactively identify and address environmental problems before civil litigation or enforcement actions arise. The EPA and many states offer companies incentives to encourage compliance, including self-reporting identified issues in order to be eligible for potential reduced or eliminated penalties.Whether a newly acquired or long-standing business, companies and their counsel must take measures to ensure ongoing environmental compliance and environmental audits provide an avenue for detecting and correcting potential problems. Regular self-auditing can help reduce governmental penalties and limit injunctive relief faced in enforcement actions, apart from voluntary disclosure of noncompliance to regulatory agencies.There are potential risks associated with voluntarily uncovering and documenting violations, as well as with the disclosure of violations. Audit findings can be evidence of compliance gaps and a company’s knowledge of those holes. And audit disclosures may not always lead to a clean resolution of disclosed violations with the regulatory agency. Disclosed information could still lead to enforcement action and also may provide ammunition in private actions against the disclosing party.Listen as our panel of environmental attorneys examines environmental enforcement policies and environmental auditing programs. The panel will discuss privilege and its exceptions, as well as the pros and cons of voluntary disclosures. The panel will also offer strategies for responding to enforcement actions.

Outline

  1. Environmental compliance auditing
  2. Privileges available to protect audit-derived information
  3. Voluntary audit disclosure
    1. EPA program
    2. State programs
  4. Audit opportunities for new owners
  5. Complications for auditing and disclosure arising from recent enforcement trends
Strafford and HB Logos

On Demand CLE Webinar

A Strafford production specially selected for HB audiences.

Speakers

Joel D. Eagle
Partner
Thompson Hine

Lawrence Schnapf
Principal
Schnapf LLC

Benefits

The panel will review these and other key issues:

  • How can companies and their counsel use environmental audits to improve compliance and soften the impact of a government enforcement action?
  • What are the best practices for counsel to advise clients that are considering utilizing environmental compliance audits?
  • What are the expected costs and risks of environmental self-audits from a legal standpoint?