David E. Nash

As an environmental lawyer for over 30 years, Dave has negotiated diverse stakeholder interests to achieve real world business and legal solutions. Dave’s legal practice includes environmental issues relating to business and real estate transactions, regulatory matters and legislative matters, environmental litigation, and environmental enforcement actions, advanced energy, emerging technologies, corporate sustainability and climate change.

Dave quarterbacked a team of national law firms in a complex corporate and environmental litigation in federal court in Tennessee involving alleged regional groundwater contamination. The case was heard in the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, where summary judgment on corporate successor liability in the client’s favor was upheld.

Dave is a co-founder of Cleveland’s Corporate Sustainability Network.

Other experience includes:

• Real Estate Transactions, including lease counseling for landowners on wind farm and solar farm projects
• Corporate M&A due diligence and environmental risk and contract negotiation and drafting
• Environmental litigation and enforcement, including civil and criminal matters
• Brownfield redevelopment issues
• Development, implementation and monitoring of compliance programs
• Superfund matters
• Regulatory counseling for all environmental media
• Negotiating consultant contracts and providing direct oversight for an array of environmental investigations and remediation projects
• Advanced and renewable energy permitting and regulatory counseling for developers and owners, before federal and state agencies, including the U.S. Army Corps. of Engineers, U.S. Wildlife Service, U.S. EPA, Ohio Power Siting Board, Ohio Department of Natural Resources and Ohio EPA
• Successfully negotiated regulatory hurdles on two of the first functioning wind turbines on the southern shore of Lake Erie
• Counseling on Renewable Energy Credit, Energy Efficiency, and Carbon Emission credit and offset projects
• Corporate sustainability strategy design and implementation
• Climate Change risk management counseling

Dave is admitted to practice in the State of Ohio, the United States District Court, Northern District of Ohio, the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, and the United States Supreme Court.

Dave received his B.A. from Wake Forest University, magna cum laude, and his law degree, with honors, from Duke University.

• Corporate Sustainability Network, Co-Founder
• Board Member, Great Lakes Biomimicry
• Board Member, Conscious Capitalism of Northeast Ohio
• Member, Mayor Jackson’s Sustainable Cleveland 2019 Stewardship Council, 2009 – 2021
• American Bar Association Renewable Energy Teleconference Series, Co-Chair, 2008-2009

Educational Involvement

• Member, Visiting Committee, Monte Ahuja College of Business, Cleveland State University
• Member, Industrial Advisory Board, College of Applied Engineering, Aeronautics and Technology, Kent State University
• Member, Sustainability Major Advisory Board, Baldwin-Wallace University

• Named by Chambers & Partners as a Senior Statesman in Environmental Law in Ohio, since 2019
• Nationally recognized in The Best Lawyers in America© for Environmental Law (since 1995-96), Environmental Litigation (since 2011) and Energy Regulatory Law (since 2015)
• Listed as Ohio “SuperLawyer” from 2004-2024 by Law & Politics
• Recognized as Recommended in Who’s Who Legal: Environment, 2024
• Named Cleveland Environmental Lawyer of the Year for 2013 by Best Lawyers
• Recipient of the 2009 Green Lantern Award for Champions of Sustainability, presented by Crains Cleveland Business

• Greater Cleveland Partnership Sustainability Summit, January 23, 2024
• “Environmental Law 101 for Business Lawyers,” Ohio State Bar Association CLE Webinar, July 21, 2020
• “Taking Control of Regulatory Compliance Messaging in the Instant Communication Age,” with Andrea Salimbene, One Water Government Affairs Workshop, March 8, 2018
• “TSCA REFORM IN A NUTSHELL: What’s happened and What to Expect Under the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act,” Ohio State Bar Association Annual Environment, Energy and Resources Law Seminar, March 2017
• “Volkswagen Air Pollution Defeat Device Scandal–Legal Considerations for Professional Engineers,” Ohio University Russ College of Engineering, March 16, 2017
• “Environmental Law 101 for Business Lawyers,” OSBA Business Law Conference, May 23, 2016
• “Infrastructure Finance Tools,” Ohio Water Law and Community Opportunities for Innovative Water System Management presented by Muskingum Watershed Conservancy District and McMahon DeGulis LLP, New Philadelphia, March 22, 2016
• Moderated a panel discussion at the 2014 Baldwin Wallace University Sustainability Symposium on “Vision and Leadership in the Public Sector – Creating a Sustainable Region by 2050,” which included the Executive Directors of the Cleveland MetroParks, the Northern Ohio Regional Sewer District and the City of Cleveland’s Chief of Sustainability.