Gary P. Gengel represents companies in key environmental matters including major transactions, natural resource damage claims, site investigation and remediation, and toxic tort litigation.

Gary’s experience spans a number of industries including defense, automotive, chemicals, electronics, pulp and paper, food manufacturing, and other industrial sectors. He has worked with every EPA Region and more than 20 of the states, in addition to virtually all of the other federal agencies having regulatory authority on environmental matters, including the US Army Corps of Engineers, the Department of Defense, the US Fish and Wildlife Service, the Department of Justice, and the Department of Interior. He has represented clients at almost 200 sites across the country, including both counseling and negotiation roles, and both defensive and offensive litigation.

Gary is a Regional Reporter Vice Chair of the American Bar Association, Section of Environment, Energy and Resources, Superfund & NRD Committee.

He formerly served as the firm's Local Chair of the Environment, Land & Resources Department and Global Co-Chair of the Environmental Regulation & Transactions Practice.

Gary’s experience includes advising:

  • Essex Chemical Corporation and Union Carbide Corporation, subsidiaries of The Dow Chemical Company, in the first natural resource damages actions to go to trial in New Jersey; both trials resulted in complete defense victories, with the Essex verdict being affirmed by the Appellate Division
  • Corporation of the Presiding Bishop of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in defending CERCLA and New York statutory and common law claims related to environmental contamination
  • Tervita Corporation in its sale of its US subsidiary Tervita, LLC, a provider of pure-play environmental waste solutions for oil and natural gas producers, to Republic Services
  • Georgia-Pacific LLC, as creditor, in connection with the chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings of Lyondell Chemical Co., a global manufacturer of chemicals and plastics
  • Cooper Industries in a CERCLA and Natural Resource Damages proceeding arising from alleged contamination of Onondaga Lake in New York
  • Covanta Holding Corporation, General Electric Company, PPG Industries, and Sequa Corporation in connection with the Passaic River in New Jersey, where the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is seeking an investigation and remediation of contaminated river sediments; there is private cost recovery and contribution litigation, and the trustees for natural resources are pursuing parties for a natural resource damages assessment and potential remedies including restoration and lost use
  • Sequa Corporation and General Mills in the Sauget Area 2 Superfund and NRD Site involving the Mississippi River in Illinois
  • Ethyl Corporation, in a suit brought by the State of New York for the cleanup of a site contaminated with perchlorethylene (PCE), a chemical commonly used in dry cleaning, resulting in a settlement agreement which resolved the matter on favorable terms for Ethyl
  • The Advertiser Company (TAC), a Gannett Company which operates a local newspaper in Montgomery, Alabama, in connection with the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) designation of a 50-block radius in the heart of downtown Montgomery as a National Priority List Superfund site
  • Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A., Inc. in connection with the Portland Harbor Superfund Site in Oregon, where EPA is seeking an investigation and remediation of sediments in the Willamette River, which have been contaminated by heavy metals, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH), dioxin/furans, and pesticides
  • Georgia-Pacific with regard to Superfund and potential natural resource damages claims at the Roanoke River Site in North Carolina
  • Ford Motor Company in a major toxic tort litigation matter originally filed in January 2006 in New Jersey, where nearly 700 plaintiffs alleged personal injuries and property damages from alleged exposure to contaminants at the Ringwood Mines/Landfill Superfund site which received Ford-related wastes, and others, in the late 1960s and early 1970s
  • Beazer East, Inc., in connection with the Gowanus Canal Superfund site
  • Sequa Corporation in connection with the Berry’s Creek Study Area Superfund Site in New Jersey
  • General Electric Company in connection with the Hudson River
  • PPG Industries, Inc. in connection with the Riverside Industrial Park Superfund site in Newark, New Jersey
  • GFL Environmental in the:
    • Sale of landfill and waste collection assets in Illinois and Minnesota to LRS Recycling
    • Acquisition of vertically integrated solid waste collection, transfer, recycling and disposal assets from Waste Management and Advanced Disposal
    • Environmental aspects of Novelis' acquisition of Aleris

Bar Qualification

  • Minnesota
  • New Jersey
  • New York

Education

  • JD, University of Minnesota Law School, 1984
  • MBA, University of Minnesota, Carlson School of Management, 1984
  • BA, Gustavus Adolphus College, 1981