CONTACTRobert Martin is a Partner at SSL and focuses his practice on commercial real estate, land use, and environmental law counseling and litigation, representing real estate owners, developers, manufacturing facilities, and non-profits in a variety of disputes. He has substantial experience in commercial purchase-sale and landlord-tenant disputes, eminent domain and inverse condemnation, easement and deed restriction creation and enforcement, quiet title and boundary litigation, and partnership dissolutions. He has twenty years’ experience in California federal and state courts, including trials and appeals.
His environmental practice includes representing property owners, developers, and manufacturers in brownfield projects and in litigation under hazardous substances laws (e.g., CEQA & RCRA), and representing clients before federal and state environmental agencies and water boards. His land use practice involves representing institutional and individual clients in obtaining and defending project entitlements for the development and use of their real property under NEPA, CEQA, and zoning and planning laws. He regularly appears before federal, state, and local agencies commissions in pursuing those entitlements. He also has strong experience in the identification and enforcement of water rights in California.
He also has a strong non-profit practice in land conservation matters, including representing numerous land trusts in the creation and enforcement of conservation, open space, and agricultural easements and other conservation devices.
EDUCATION:
- University of California Hastings College of Law, San Francisco (J.D., magna cum laude, 2004)
- Mr. Martin also served as Senior Articles Editor for the Hastings Law Journal
- Claremont McKenna College, Claremont, CA (B.A., 1998)
PRACTICE AREAS:
- Environmental
- Land Use, Entitlements and CEQA
- Private Capital and Personal Real Property Services
- Real Estate and Land Use Litigation
PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES:
- Northern California Super Lawyer, Rising Star (2013-2015).
- Member, Environmental Law Section of the State Bar of California.
- Outdoor and environmental educator for non-profit outdoor organizations leading underserved youth on wilderness outings in the Bay Area and Sierra Nevada.
- Mentor for East Bay College Fund.
PUBLICATIONS:
- Deep Trouble: Investigations and Litigation Flowing from the Deepwater Horizon Disaster, ABA Environmental Litigation and Toxic Torts Comm. Newsletter (Apr 2011)
- Selected Developments in Securities Litigation, Los Angeles County Bar Association Annual Securities Regulation Conference (2007)
- Sherman Shorts Out: The Dimming of Antitrust Enforcement in the California Electricity Crisis, Hastings Law Journal (2003)