Vito A. Pinto
Mr. Pinto is a Partner with the Environmental Practice Group of Schenck, Price, Smith & King's Business Organizations Department. He counsels a diverse array of businesses with respect to compliance with federal and state environmental laws including RCRA, CERCLA, OSHA, the Solid Waste Management Act, the New Jersey Spill Compensation and Control Act and clean air legislation. He has extensive negotiation experience with both the United States Environmental Protection Agency and the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection having negotiated the reduction of penalty assessments and complex Administrative Consent Orders in many high profile matters. He routinely prepares and obtains permits and variances for a wide variety of industries and works closely with Environmental Health & Safety personnel as well as upper management to prepare and implement internal corporate compliance plans. He has been actively involved in the investigation and remediation of some of the country's most renowned Superfund Sites where he has sat on litigation steering committees and has organized and overseen alternative dispute resolution processes.
He has litigated matters in both federal and state courts in the areas of CERCLA cost-recovery, New Jersey Spill Compensation and Control Act, real estate and mass toxic tort matters, and counsels senior management in the area of white collar criminal defense for environmental torts. He was involved with litigating the defense of diethylstilbestrol and breast implant litigation in state and federal courts. He routinely represents policyholders in connection with multi-million dollar environmental insurance coverage claims in federal district court and has litigated reported case law in this area. He has also appeared as a guest lecturer on environmental insurance coverage law at Seton Hall University School of Law.
Mr. Pinto's practice also encompasses transactional work including the performance of due diligence reviews, the evaluation of contingent liabilities, the negotiation and drafting of acquisition and financing agreements and overseeing compliance with federal and state laws as they relate to transactions.
Mr. Pinto is a member of the New Jersey State Bar Association's Section of Environmental Law. He has published articles on a variety of topics including solid waste management, RCRA and water pollution and is a frequent lecturer on these and other topics including air pollution control and the regulation of solid waste, environmental insurance coverage and white collar criminal defense. Mr. Pinto graduated from Franklin and Marshall College with a degree in Geology and received his law degree, with Honors, from The George Washington University National Law Center in Washington, D.C. where he was a member of the Moot Court Honor Board and the Journal of International Law and Economics. Prior to beginning private practice, Mr. Pinto was the Judicial Law Clerk to the Honorable James J. Petrella, Presiding Judge Appellate Division, New Jersey Superior Court. Prior to joining the firm, Mr. Pinto was Special Counsel for Environmental and Regulatory Law at McCarter & English, LLP.
Mr. Pinto may be reached at vap@spsk.com
