Ladd Cahoon

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Phone: (415) 399-1560
Ladd Cahoon
Rated by Super Lawyers


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Ladd helps clients buying, selling and cleaning up impacted real estate, assessing and allocating responsibility and liability, obtaining insurance coverage, and pursuing appropriate parties to pay. Ladd defends clients in government agency enforcement actions, and negotiates workable resolutions. Where necessary, Ladd defends clients and pursues responsible parties in litigation. Areas of practice include contaminated property, water quality, stormwater, wetlands, USTs, CEQA, and Prop 65.

Prior to his legal career, Ladd conducted water quality enforcement at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, engaged in water quality and wetlands legislative policy and lobbying for the National Wildlife Federation, and worked as an earth sciences laboratory technician at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory.

Significant Representations

A sampling of Ladd’s clients and work:

  • Residential and commercial developers and portfolio holders – optimizing terms of sales, purchases and development of environmentally impaired properties.
  • Leading international retailer – conducting environmental due diligence investigations, negotiating environmental terms in leases and purchase and sale agreements for new and expanding facilities in California and elsewhere in the western United States.
  • Former chemical manufacturer – managing legacy liability arising out of a corporate predecessor’s historic disposal of large volumes of waste to a very large Class I hazardous waste landfill, navigating investigation and remediation requirements with state agencies, and developing internal cost allocation formulas with other potentially responsible parties.
  • Winery and vineyard owners – providing compliance advice and influencing state water quality permitting.
  • Underground storage tank owners – successfully appealing UST Fund denials, resulting in claim awards for cleanup and site closures.
  • Neighborhood groups – developing strategies and tactics to oppose specific proposed developments in unique residential areas.
  • Petroleum refinery – defending against EPA administrative enforcement.
  • Retailers – defending against Prop 65 lawsuits and district attorney consumer product claims concerning hazardous materials.
  • Manufacturers – defending against Clean Water Act stormwater citizen suits and providing compliance guidance.
  • Trucking companies – collaborating with criminal defense counsel defending against enforcement actions concerning accidental environmental releases.