Stuart Lieberman is a founding member of Lieberman Blecher & Sinkevich with over 30 years of environmental and land use legal experience. With a primary focus on environmental litigation in state and federal court, as well as the Office of Administrative Law, his experience is extensive largely focusing on pre- trial litigation, trial discovery, and court room advocacy.
Mr. Lieberman does not prepare his cases for trial and hand them off to another lawyer to actually litigate the case, instead he litigates the cases himself. He has successfully argued the landmark Raleigh Avenue Beach Associates case before the New Jersey Supreme Court, 185, N.J. 40 (2005) and has argued and otherwise participated in other important Supreme Court cases, including a successful argument in Ben Elazar v. Macrietta Cleaners, 2016 WL 3600201, which in a 2017 opinion addressed the required court filing date for persons injured by government entities due to toxic exposure.
Mr. Lieberman was a former state Deputy Attorney General, who represented the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection. He regularly uses his regulatory experience in advising property owners, industrial operators, gas station owners, dry cleaner operators, and many other companies, individuals and governments of their environmental compliance responsibilities and issues. When necessary he regularly files suit in court to defend his clients’ rights, or alternatively defends them in cases where they have been sued.
Mr. Lieberman has represented many developers and community organizations before planning and zoning boards throughout New Jersey. These cases have often involved use variances, land use board approvals, storm water issues, septic design issues, cell tower cases and billboard cases. He has worked for private developers and environmental organizations and is equally comfortable in both settings.
Mr. Lieberman has represented many neighbors in noise, flooding and odor disputes. He is familiar with all of the adjudicatory and non adjudicatory means of addressing these types of usually highly personal matters.
He has been at the forefront of toxic exposure litigation in New Jersey, participating in one of the first MTBE cases on behalf of affected well water drinking plaintiffs in the state, the Kidde Kollege case on behalf of children exposed to mercury, and many contaminated drinking water cases, to name just some. He successfully represented homeowners with failing radon systems in one of the only class actions to address this kind of dangerous issue.
Mr. Lieberman has represented many community associations in both environmental and community association issues. He has also represented many condominium unit owners with mold, odor, and maintenance issues against association boards and management.
Mr. Lieberman frequently lectures on environmental issues throughout the state. In 2009 he was awarded the Distinguished Service Award for Excellence in Continuing Legal Education by the New Jersey Institute for Continuing Legal Education. He has written and published many articles for the New Jersey Lawyer newspaper and other state and national legal publications. For over a decade his environmental columns were syndicated throughout the United States, including by two New York times owned newspapers.
Mr. Lieberman served as the Vice Chair, and then as Chair of the Board of Consultors for the State Bar’s Real Property, Trust and Estate Law Section and is currently an active member of that organization, as well as of the Mercer County Bar Association.
He has been named “Super Lawyer” every year since 2010 in the annual list published by Thomas Reuters.* Attorneys such as Mr. Lieberman are chosen for inclusion on this list by first being included in a candidate pool and selected after an evaluation by both a third party research committee and peers.
On October 10, 2017 Mr. Lieberman was appointed by the New Jersey Supreme Court as a Trustee of the New Jersey Lawyers’ Fund for Client Protection for a five year term starting January 1, 2018 through December 31, 2022.
Contact Info:
732-654-6459
SJL@liebermanblecher.com