Alternative Dispute Resolution Neutral Services

Our legal and technical experience in both arbitration and mediation matters has also made our firm a logical choice when parties are searching for an experienced and knowledgeable neutral to help resolve their environmental, land use or energy disputes. Founding partner Joe Manko and John Gullace, along with the firm's senior technical consultant Darryl Borrelli, have worked together on a number of large and complex alternative dispute resolution (ADR) matters in which MGKF had been retained to act as the neutral.

Joe has more than 40 years of experience as an environmental lawyer both in government (as Regional Counsel for U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Region III) and in private practice. He has spoken on ADR at various forums, including at CLE programs, and was a lecturer-in-law on various environmental subjects, including ADR, at the University of Pennsylvania and Vermont Law Schools for more than two decades. He initially received his training through the International Institute for Conflict Prevention and Resolution (CPR). John is a former federal law clerk with more than twenty years of experience in private practice as an environmental litigator and has also received neutral training through CPR. Darryl has undergraduate and graduate degrees in engineering, with 30 years of environmental consulting experience working for MGKF, large industrial corporations, and the Department of Defense.

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MGKF has been retained to provide neutral services in the following representative matters:

• Retained for a mediation between two large corporations over whether a facility that had just been sold could comply with applicable Clean Air Act requirements. This matter involved a detailed analysis of the Clean Air Act requirements as applied to the facility in question and the application of this analysis to a complex transactional document.
• Handled a mediation between several municipalities and municipal authorities who were members of a joint regional wastewater treatment plant regarding the proper allocation of capital and operating expenses, as well as the allocation of capacity and user charges among the participants.
• Managed a dispute between two large multi-national corporations regarding responsibility for wastewater treatment issues at a plant in Puerto Rico that was part of a large multi-site transaction. The arbitration required an interpretation of the indemnity terms of the acquisition agreement.
• Handled a dispute between two large corporations regarding responsibility for PCB contamination of river sediments arising from manufacturing operations. The subject of the arbitration involved an interpretation of a pre-CERCLA indemnity agreement under New York law.
• Managed a dispute between two large corporations regarding responsibility for chlorinated solvent contamination that had spawned a number of legal proceedings. The four-day arbitration hearing involved a number of experts on a myriad of complex technical issues and the award required an in-depth analysis of contractual indemnification provisions and their application to complicated corporate structures.
• Provided a mediation regarding the adequacy of a due diligence investigation done by an environmental consultant in the context of an acquisition of petroleum-impacted property.