Historians as Experts in Environmental Litigation

Much environmental litigation concerns events and long-term activities that occurred decades ago – events and activities for which there are no living witnesses.  Litigation involves determining the facts of the matter and then determining how the law should be applied to the facts.  In order to determine pertinent historical facts concerning events and activities that occurred long ago, courts and litigants employ expert historians to conduct extensive research of the past, to employ professional analysis of the data uncovered, and to draw conclusions, or “opinions,” as they are called in legal parlance.  Environmental litigation also often involves the expert testimony of many other technical experts.  One of the challenges for the expert historian is to develop expert opinions about historical matters with technical dimensions, without venturing into opinions which the historian is not qualified to offer.  In my presentation, I’ll talk briefly about two cases, U.S. v. Newmont, et al, the Midnite mine Superfund case in the State of Washington, and U.S. v. Sunoco, et al, a case in Philadelphia involving the contamination of groundwater by refined petroleum product. The cases illustrate the kinds of historical issues which arise in environmental litigation and illustrate the ways I have developed expert opinions on historical technical matters without stepping outside my expertise as an historian.