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Environmental Liability – More Than Pollution

ESG Market Briefing Underwriting

Online

16th September 2025 • 13.00 - 14.00

About this session

Join Aspen Insurance and Weightmans law Firm who will explore the overlooked exposures in general liability, highlighted policy gaps, and shared real-life case studies — including the Bartoline case, which set an important precedent for how sudden and accidental pollution is handled in liability insurance

Learning objectives

At the end of this session, delegates will be able to:

Identify the coverage limitations of sudden and accidental pollution coverage
Identify how gradual pollution coverage can help clients with uninsured exposures
Identify latest legal developments regarding pollution

Richard Spink

Head of International Environmental Liability • Aspen Insurance

Richard Spink is the Head of International Environmental Liability at Aspen. Richard has 25 years’ experience in the London market underwriting environmental and multinational casualty risks; he is ACII qualified and has gained the ISO9001 external auditor accreditation. Richard has presented and published articles on a variety of topics including ESG exposures, USA casualty and longtail insurance pricing.

Aidan Thomson

Partner • Weightmans

Aidan is an environmental law specialist. He works for clients across many industry sectors, in particular insurance, utilities, real estate, manufacturing, waste management and transport.

His work across these sectors has exposed him to the full range of environmental liability and compliance issues. He has dealt with land and water contamination, air pollution, impacts to nature, waste management and chemical safety. He is an expert on energy efficiency regulation, especially in buildings, and he has a detailed knowledge of the environmental permitting regime in the context of which many of these issues are embedded.

Aidan has provided advice in these areas in a number of different contexts, ranging from administrative law challenges, statutory appeal processes, criminal litigation and civil claims for damages on the one hand, to transactional risk management on the other. Aidan has experience of the defence of class actions for environmental harm and of enforcement/prosecution proceedings by a number of environmental regulators.

As well as dealing with traditional environmental liability and compliance issues, Aidan is involved in related areas of ESG, helping clients to manage the risks and opportunities stemming from new laws around climate change, and embed new behaviours internally and externally.

Aidan has been recommended as a leading environmental law practitioner in the Legal 500 and Chambers directories for over twenty years