Meet Robert L. Quinn

Senior Counsel

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Rob has headed the firm’s environmental law and land use practice since 1991. He works on a wide range of environmental and land use matters, including regulatory compliance, hazardous waste litigation, Superfund matters, air, water and wetlands issues, enforcement proceedings, and resolving environmental issues in corporate and real estate transactions. Rob’s practice also includes a broad spectrum of civil litigation matters, including personal injury, insurance loss recovery, eminent domain, employment discrimination, and breach of contract cases, among others.

Rob began his legal career at the Boston law firm of Gaston Snow & Ely Bartlett, where he was an associate attorney in the litigation department from 1981 to 1986, focusing on civil litigation, environmental and health law. From 1986 to 1991 he served as Deputy General Counsel at the Massachusetts Department of Public Health (MDPH), concentrating primarily on environmental matters. During his tenure at the MDPH, Rob represented the MDPH on the Special Legislative Commission on Liability for Releases of Oil and Hazardous Materials and on the Interagency Committee on Occupational Health Surveillance, and became a member of the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Lead Poisoning Task Force.

Since joining Egan, Flanagan & Cohen in 1991, Rob has successfully represented numerous individuals, corporations and nonprofit organizations in a variety of matters. In 2013 Rob obtained a $500,000 settlement for an engineer injured at a job site, a $500,000 settlement for the owner of property contaminated with gasoline by an oil company, and a $50.4 million reference award that led to a $62 million settlement for a nonprofit in a claim against its insurer for property damage resulting from a tornado. In 2014 Rob obtained a $29.4 million recovery for a nonprofit from the Federal Emergency Management Agency for uninsured tornado damage. In 2015 Rob obtained a $691,000 settlement for the owner of a newly built mausoleum for breach of the construction contract, and a settlement for a client whose commercial property had been contaminated with solvents, heavy metals and PCBs that included a $2.5 million cash payment, plus the cost to re mediate the property to achieve a Permanent Solution without an Activities and Use Limitation, estimated at the time of settlement to be $1 million to $4 million. In 2019 Rob obtained a $590,000 settlement for a client who developed overexertion induced rhabdomyolysis and compartment syndrome in both thighs after taking a stationary bicycle spinning class at a gym.

• Environmental Law and Land Use
• Civil Litigation
• Personal Injury

• Massachusetts Bar Association (Member: Property Law Section, Civil Litigation Section)
• Boston Bar Association (Member: Environmental Law Section, Litigation Section)
• Hampden County Bar Association
• Hampshire County Bar Association
• American Public Health Association (Member: Environment Section, Law Section)
• Massachusetts Public Health Association

• Massachusetts
• U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit
• U.S. Court for the District of Massachusetts

• Boston University School of Public Health, M.P.H., Environmental Health, 1982
• Boston University School of Law, J.D., 1981
  •  Editor, Boston University Law Review

• University of Mexico, Mexico City, Postgraduate Studies in Political and Social Sciences, 1974-1977
• University of Louvain, Belgium, B.A., Philosophy, 1973
• Quincy Junior College, A.A., 1971

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• Hurt on the Job: A Guide to the Massachusetts Workers’ Compensation System, Western MassCosh, 1995, Contributing Reviewer
• Emergency Relief and Toxic Tort Reform for Victims of Exposure to Hazardous Materials, Paper presented at American Public Health Association Convention, 1987
• Partial Closings: The Scope of an Employer’s Duty to Bargain, 61 Boston University Law Review 735, 1981

• Spanish
• French

• During his professional career, Rob has served on the panel of several continuing legal education programs.
• Rob taught Environmental Law as an Adjunct Professor at Western New England University School of Law (1992-94), and Health Law as an Adjunct Professor at the University of Massachusetts School of Public Health and Health Services (1998-99).
• Rob was Chairman of the PRP Group for the Palmer MA Superfund Site (1992-95), and General Counsel to Ludlow Hospital (1992-94).
• Rob has served as a member of the Board of Directors of the Bilingual Veterans Outreach Centers of Massachusetts, Inc. from 1991 to the present, and a member of the Board of Directors of the Western Massachusetts Legal Services, Inc. from 1999 through 2010.
• Rob served as an elected Amherst Town Meeting Member (1995-2010).
• Rob represented three incarcerated individuals from 1983 to 1987 in a successful effort to obtain, through the Massachusetts Board of Pardons, the Governor, and the Governor’s Council, a commutation of their natural life sentences to a term of years, resulting in parole eligibility and release from prison.