
Tracing Corporate Successorship
We regularly engage in complex research and analysis regarding the tracing of corporate successors and assets.
In an environmental liability case regarding cleanup costs for a site with multiple owner/operators over a 100-year period, our client was defending a claim for virtually all of the allocable liability at the site due to the claimed “unidentifiable” status of various historic operating entities. With a multimillion-dollar cleanup bill at stake, our client asked us to thoroughly investigate the other, unidentified “John Doe” defendants who were historical owner/operators of the Site. Through an extensive investigation of the transactions involving each of these entities, we determined that the ultimate successor to one of the more significant tenants who operated at the site was, indeed, the plaintiff itself.
In another environmental cost recovery matter where the present owner was faced with a multimillion-dollar groundwater cleanup, we successfully identified successors-in-interest to the three prior owner/operators of the site. During litigation, our expert testimony regarding successorship overcame a summary motion for dismissal made by one of the defendants, a Fortune 500 company.