Joel Kuehnert is an environmental lawyer with a technical background in civil and environmental engineering. Joel has been part of Bradley’s Environmental Law team for more than 25 years. During that time, he has gained a wealth of experience in a broad variety of environmental matters, representing clients in many different industries, ranging from companies with global operations to small, local businesses.

Joel regularly works with clients to solve environmental challenges. He has helped clients proactively maintain environmentally compliant operations and respond to claims of non-compliant operations by both environmental agencies and private citizens. His experience includes all environmental media —land, water, and air — arising under a broad variety of state and federal environmental laws and programs, such as the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, and CERCLA (Superfund). Joel also has extensive experience in environmental litigation, ranging from mass tort lawsuits involving thousands of plaintiffs to single plaintiff toxic tort and property damage lawsuits.

Joel also advises clients in the context of the acquisition or sale of real property and manufacturing operations that include environmentally impacted properties. He works closely with the client and environmental consultants (technical experts) to assess environmental impacts and potential liabilities and identify potential solutions, including taking properties through Brownfield redevelopment programs as a means of potentially limiting environmental liabilities.

Joel is also a registered member of the patent bar of the United States Patent and Trademark Office. He has significant experience with patent infringement litigation in a wide variety of subject matters – from financial transaction technologies to sporting goods to life sciences technology. Joel has been involved in patent infringement lawsuits in a variety of jurisdictions, including the Eastern District of Texas, one of the busiest patent litigation dockets in the country.

Bar Admissions

• Alabama, 1998

• United States Court of Appeals, 11th Circuit
• United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit
• United States Patent & Trademark Office
• United States District Court, Middle District of Alabama
• United States District Court, Northern District of Alabama
• United States District Court, Southern District of Alabama

Education

• University of Texas School of Law, J.D., 1998, With honors; Texas Law Review, Associate Editor
• Vanderbilt University, B.S., Civil Engineering with a Concentration in Environmental Science, 1993, magna cum laude; Chi Epsilon Civil Engineering Honor Society; Tau Beta Pi Engineering Honor Society

With his technical background in civil and environmental engineering, the focus of Joel’s practice is in the intellectual property and environmental arenas. On the intellectual property side, Joel has litigated a variety of patent infringement disputes in a number of jurisdictions, including the Eastern District of Texas.

Joel has extensive experience in the context of litigation and environmental compliance on a variety of issues arising under both state and federal law. Joel has represented clients in a broad range of environmental matters, including Clean Water Act litigation, interstate water disputes, and matters before Alabama's Environmental Management Commission. He has also been actively involved in numerous toxic tort matters in state and federal court in areas such as asbestos and chemical exposure, products liability, and environmental trespass and nuisance disputes.