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Meet Our Professionals

Kevin A. Dunlap

Partner

Kevin Dunlap represents a wide variety of clients, including manufacturing, construction, chemical and engineering companies, as well as public utilities, retailers, landfills and professional service firms. He regularly advises clients on issues that include class actions, environmental disputes, unfair trade practices, mass torts, toxic torts, products liability, personal injury, death, property damage, insurance coverage, shareholder disputes, and general commercial disputes.

In addition, he has handled employment contract disputes and trade secret and trademark litigation. He has also handled litigation involving multiple fatalities and catastrophic injuries, including paraplegics and quadriplegics with extensive life care planning issues.

Kevin has acted as lead counsel in numerous trials and hearings in South Carolina and North Carolina state and federal courts and has argued before the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, the South Carolina Supreme Court, and the South Carolina Court of Appeals. He has handled multiple matters with extensive publicity involving hundreds of news articles.

Along with other Parker Poe colleagues, he currently serves as national coordinating counsel for two defendant chemical manufacturing companies in multidistrict litigation (MDL) involving over 10,000 separate water provider and personal injury lawsuits and multiple putative class actions. The MDL action is pending in federal district court in Charleston, South Carolina, and involves aqueous film forming foam PFAS claims under state law in jurisdictions throughout the United States.

Kevin served as lead counsel in a two-week trial involving daily press coverage, which resulted in a defense verdict in an environmental dispute under theories of negligence, nuisance, and trespass claims.

Kevin was twice selected as Best Lawyers’ Environmental Litigation Lawyer of the Year for the Greenville, SC region. While at Vanderbilt University, Kevin was the recipient of the Stanley D. Rose Award for writing and was the associate editor of the Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law.

Representative Experience

  • Served as lead counsel in a two-week trial involving daily press coverage, which resulted in a defense verdict in an environmental dispute.
  • Represented the defendant in the landmark case establishing the measure of damage for environmental impacts to property before the South Carolina Supreme Court. This case has been described as the most significant case in environmental litigation in the Carolinas over the last 25 years.
  • Served as lead counsel for a matter in which more than 15,000 claimants sought certification of three class actions involving alleged air emissions.
  • Acted as lead counsel in an insurance coverage dispute involving in excess of $50 million.
  • Acted as lead counsel in numerous matters in the defense of multiple environmental trespass claims involving alleged groundwater contamination.
  • Served as lead counsel in $1.5 million settlement during a trial in federal court involving an international shipment of textile machinery.
  • Served as lead counsel in $1 million judgment in an insurance coverage dispute arising out of a massive motor vehicle accident – one of the largest in South Carolina history – involving multiple fatalities and numerous injuries.
  • Acted as lead counsel in a suit against the United States under CERCLA, commonly known as Superfund.
  • Served as lead counsel in multimillion-dollar judgment at the trial court level in an environmental coverage dispute.
  • Served as lead counsel in jury verdict of no liability in the defense of claims under a franchise agreement.
  • Served as lead counsel in directing verdicts in various cases involving admiralty claims and an alleged breach of partnership.
  • Acted as lead counsel in successfully defeating class certification.
  • Served as lead counsel in defense of commercial class action.

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Honors & Awards

  • The Best Lawyers in America in Commercial Litigation, 2008-2025; Environmental Law, 2010-2025; Environmental Litigation, 2011-2025
  • The Best Lawyers in America "Lawyer of the Year" in Greenville Metro Area for Environmental Litigation, 2022; Environmental Law, 2019
  • Greenville Business Magazine's "Legal Elite" in Education Law, 2019
  • Martindale-Hubbell AV® Preeminent™ in Class Actions; Environmental Law; Commercial Litigation; Unfair Trade; Tort Defense; Insurance Coverage
  • South Carolina Super Lawyers, 2008-2016; Top 25 Lawyers, 2010
  • Phi Beta Kappa
  • Furman University, Recipient of the General Excellence Award by the Faculty

Memberships

  • Palisades Episcopal School, Chairman, Board of Directors