Pollution that harms communities comes in many forms – and has disastrous consequences for communities. Noise from data centers, lead released into municipal water systems, the spilling of oil from on-shore and offshore pipeline, or the toxic release of chemicals from gas leaks, train derailments, or chemical fires pollute communities, reducing property values, interfering with the use and enjoyment of private properties, and impacting the health, safety, peace, comfort, and welfare of communities.

Lieff Cabraser is at the forefront of cutting-edge litigation applying sometimes centuries-old concepts of property and nuisance law to modern problems. We represent property owners and renters, fishers, local, businesses, and government entities in high-stakes litigation against fossil fuel companies, technology companies, and other polluters. We have recovered billions for our clients for environmental harms. Our expertise is unparalleled.

• Data Center Nuisance & Injury Cases
  • On September 23, 2026, Lieff Cabraser and co-counsel filed a federal class action lawsuit in Tennessee on behalf of southern Memphis residents impacted by the massive hyperscale data centers that Elon Musk’s xAI company built to power its supercomputers and chatbot. Residents allege that the loud data centers, and the gas-turbine power plant that fuels them, have interfered with their ability to use and enjoy their properties, diminished their property values, and deposited dust, ash, and other particulate matter onto their properties.
• Conyers, Georgia Bio-Lab Toxic Release
  • On October 2, 2024, Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein, LLP, Grant & Eisenhofer, Jenner Law, and Georgia counsel Holzer & Holzer filed a federal class action lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia in Atlanta against Bio-Lab Inc. and Kik Custom Products, Inc. over the September 29, 2024 chemical fire and toxic plume release in Conyers, Georgia, on behalf of certain named individual local residents and business owners as well as a class of all others similarly affected by the Bio-Lab environmental disaster.
• California AG Climate Change Litigation
  • Lieff Cabraser has been retained by the California Attorney General’s office to prosecute its groundbreaking climate change deception lawsuit against five of the largest oil and gas companies in the world. The lawsuit alleges the companies misled the California public about climate change and thereby caused significant and long-term harm to the People of the State of California. The Attorney General’s lawsuit, filed in San Francisco County Superior Court in September 2023, claims that Exxon Mobil, Shell, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, BP, and the American Petroleum Institute (API) have known for decades that reliance on fossil fuels would cause warm the planet and thereby cause catastrophic harm, but suppressed that information while also actively pushing disinformation about the causes of climate change. Their deception caused a delayed societal response to existential threat of climate, and California is suffering terrible climate harms as a result, whether in the form of extreme wildfires, extreme heat, drought and water shortages, sea level rise and coastal flooding, damage to agriculture, as well as habitat and biodiversity disruptions.
• Benton Harbor Lead Poisoning Litigation
  • In late May 2022, Lieff Cabraser and civil rights legends Edwards & Jennings, P.C. filed a proposed Second Amended Class Action Complaint on behalf of the residents of Benton Harbor, Michigan, in the federal public health emergency litigation arising from the poisoning of the Benton Harbor, Michigan, water supply caused by lead, bacteria, and other contaminants. A June 2026 settlement has led to the continuation of the residents’ lawsuit against the City’s insurance company in the United States District Court for the Western District of Michigan, in City of Benton Harbor v. The Travelers Indemnity Company of Connecticut et al., No. 1:25-cv-00861-HYJ-PJG (W.D. Mich.). Class members can stay updated at BentonHarborWaterSettlement.com, and will be advised if that lawsuit is successful through a Court-approved notice plan.

Lieff Cabraser possesses the expertise and financial resources to thoroughly investigate environmental cases and hold the defendants accountable. We have successfully prosecuted cases against many of the world’s most powerful corporations, obtaining compensation for families, businesses, government entities, and property owners suffering environmental harms.

For example, Lieff Cabraser served on the Plaintiffs Executive Committee and as Co-Chair of the Law and Briefing Committee in litigation brought by our firm and co-counsel on behalf of local residents over the February 3, 2023 derailment and toxic spill in East Palestine, a small, rural community in northeast Ohio. The tragedy made national news when a Norfolk Southern train carrying highly toxic chemicals, including vinyl chloride, derailed in East Palestine. In late 2024, the court granted final approval to a $600 million settlement of the litigation, the largest settlement for a railroad disaster in U.S. history.

Oil Spills and Gas Leaks

Andrews v. Plains All American Pipeline
Lieff Cabraser served as Court-appointed Class Counsel in this action arising from an oil spill in Santa Barbara County in May 2015. A pipeline owned by Plains ruptured, and oil from the pipeline flowed into the Pacific Ocean, soiling beaches and impacting local fisheries. Lieff Cabraser represented homeowners who lost the use of the beachfront amenity for which they pay a premium, local oil platform workers who were laid off as a result of the spill and subsequent closure of the pipeline, as well as fishers whose catch was impacted by the oil spill. A settlement was reached in 2022 to provide $184 million to a class of Fishers and Fish Processors injured as a result of the spill, and $46 million to beachfront property owners and lessees whose properties were impacted by the spill. On September 16, 2022, the Court granted final approval to the $230 million settlement.

Grey Fox v. Plains
In September 2024, Lieff Cabraser, along with co-counsel, secured Court approval of a $70 million dollar settlement on behalf of a class of property owners who had granted easements permitting a pipeline to pass under and through their properties. Plaintiffs argued that the pipeline had been functionally abandoned as result of the non-operation of the pipeline for approximately nine years following an oil spill, and the easements were therefore void under California common law. The minimum payment to members of the class was $50,000. In exchange for these payments, class members permitted Sable Offshore Corporation to record notice for each properties that the easements were valid and permitted the repair of the pipeline, including the installation of state-of-the-art automatic shut-off valves to prevent a future rupture.

Gutierrez v. Amplify
In October 2021, a failure occurred in a pipeline running from the Port of Long Beach to an offshore oil platform known as Elly, owned by Amplify Energy and operated by Beta Operating Company. The failure caused what is now estimated to be tens of thousands of gallons of oil to gush into the Catalina Channel, creating a slick that spanned over 8,000 acres. The spill left oil along long stretches of beach in Newport Beach, Laguna Beach and Huntington Beach, killing fish and birds and threatening ecologically sensitive wetlands in what officials called an environmental disaster. In 2023, Lieff Cabraser and co-counsel secured a $50 million settlement with Amplify Energy Corporation, Beta Operating Company, LLC, and San Pedro Bay Pipeline Company. Under the Settlement, Amplify will pay $34 million to the Fisher Class, $9 million to the Property Class, and $7 million to the Waterfront Tourism Class.

Southern California Gas Leak Cases
Lieff Cabraser was selected by the Los Angeles County Superior Court to help lead two important class action cases on behalf of homeowners and businesses that suffered economic injuries in the wake of the massive Porter Ranch gas leak, which began in October of 2015 and lasted into February of 2016. In 2022, the class of property owners and lessees reached a settlement of $40 million. The claims of the class of business owners were ultimately denied by the California Supreme Court.

Other notable successes include the Exxon Valdez Oil Disaster, in which we served as co-counsel for thousands of fishermen, landowners, and others whose livelihoods were gravely harmed when the Exxon Valdez ran aground in March 1989, spilling 11 million gallons of oil into Prince William Sound, Alaska, and killing tens of thousands of wild creatures and fouling 1,300 miles of beaches and surface waters.

We represented individuals, property owners, and business owners in litigation against BP (formerly British Petroleum) and the other companies involved in drilling at and the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico in April 2010. A settlement with BP, which was announced in March 2012, requires BP to fully satisfy all qualified claims with no cap on the amount BP will pay.