Toxic Succession Cases
Understand inherited environmental liabilities before they become your financial responsibility.
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What is Toxic Succession?
Toxic succession occurs when contaminated property is passed from one party to another, often through an inheritance, charitable donation, or business transaction, without recognizing the environmental liability attached. The recipient typically learns of the contamination after accepting title, when they’ve already assumed legal responsibility.
Under laws like CERCLA, the current property owner is often held liable for environmental cleanup, regardless of who caused the pollution. These obligations can lead to regulatory actions or liens that limit the property’s marketability or transfer. This means heirs, trustees, nonprofits, universities, business partners, and acquiring businesses can face significant financial exposure simply by taking ownership.
Restorical helps successor owners manage the fallout of toxic succession. We are not estate planners, CPA’s or environmental consultants. Our firm becomes involved when contamination is suspected or confirmed before or after the subject property changes hands, and the contamination comes to light. Deploying our Proven Process, we uncover historical commercial general liability (CGL) policies that may still provide coverage for environmental cleanup. This allows clients to access funding, reduce liability, and take action before new owners become liable for contamination and regulatory pressure increases.
How We Help Successor Owners
We begin with a conversation to understand the nature of the property transfer, what has been discovered so far, and who currently holds title. This helps determine if immediate liability risk exists and which professionals may need to be involved.
We collect all available documents related to the property’s ownership, operational use, and any environmental assessments that have been conducted. If none exists, we refer the client to a qualified environmental consultant to investigate potential contamination.
Our team investigates the site’s history to uncover evidence of past uses that may have led to pollution. We also begin searching for historical insurance policies, especially old commercial general liability (CGL) policies, that may still provide coverage.
We dig through archived business records, policy ledgers, broker files, and public databases to locate and verify historic coverage. Even if no paperwork is available, we can often reconstruct missing policy details through indirect sources.
Once viable insurance assets are found, we help develop a strategy to leverage that coverage. This may involve coordinating with environmental attorneys, preserving the property’s status within the estate, or preparing documentation to support a future insurance claim.
We stay involved as needed through insurance negotiations, estate administration, or regulatory response. We aim to unlock insurance funding and protect our clients from unnecessary personal financial exposure.
Toxic Succession Case Studies
Frequently Asked Questions
In most cases, yes. Liability attaches to the property’s legal owner, regardless of whether you caused the contamination. If you accept title as an individual, a non-profit, a business, or even through an LLC, you may be personally liable for environmental remediation.
The Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) is a federal environmental law that holds current and former owners and operators of contaminated property responsible for cleanup, even if they didn’t contribute to the pollution.
Family estates, trustees, nonprofits, universities, public agencies, gas stations, and businesses involved in M&A transactions are all vulnerable, especially when a real estate transaction occurs without environmental due diligence.
That’s common. Many clients come to us without any documentation. We use various research tools, public records, and indirect sources to reconstruct policy evidence and find potential coverage.
Yes. We collaborate with estate planning attorneys, elder law specialists, CPA’s, environmental consultants, business succession planning specialists, and financial advisors to help clients manage toxic succession in numerous situations.
Ideally, before accepting title to any property that could carry environmental risk. If you’re preparing a will, managing an estate, or reviewing a property gift or asset transfer, this is the time to evaluate environmental liabilities and explore coverage options.
Years in Business
Allows us to be the leading insurance archaeology and claims management firm in the country
Million Recovered
We uncover hidden assets for our clients, and we excel at obtaining coverage for their environmental liabilities
Policyholder Clients Served
We only work for policyholders and property owners and do not offer our services to insurance companies
Historical Policy Database
Restorical has been collecting, analyzing, and cataloging historical insurance policies spanning the 1950s-1990s.
Our proprietary database with carrier-specific detail is leveraged for our clients on a daily basis
