Bardenwerper, Talbott, & Roberts PLLC, Attorneys

William B. (Bill) Bardenwerper, is listed in Super Lawyers, and Best Lawyers in America, with top rankings in Chambers USA and Martindale-Hubbell.  Bill received these distinctions from a practice beginning in 1978 as Jefferson County’s Director of Intergovernmental Affairs and as Special Counsel to the County Executive (now U.S. Senate Minority Leader) Mitch McConnell.  In 1984, he joined a large "downtown" law firm and in 1987 became managing partner of a firm bearing his name, today Bardenwerper, Talbott & Roberts, PLLC.  He has always primarily practiced real estate development law.  In 2012, his firm celebrates 25 years at the law office he established in east Louisville.

Bill is a graduate of the University of Virginia and the University of Louisville Brandeis School of Law where he served as President of the Student Bar Association, as Editor-in-Chief and founder of the Louisville Law Examiner and as Founding Director of the Louisville Law Forum, and as Co-Founder of the Brandeis Honor Society.

Specifically, as respects Bill's and his firm's principal practice areas today, over the years Bill has served on or as chairman of numerous special committees and task forces dealing with the local development process.  During the 10-year process of developing the new Cornerstone 2020 Comprehensive Land Use Plan and Land Development Code, Bill served as Chairman of both the Cornerstone 2020 Marketplace Committee and the Louisville Area Chamber of Commerce 2020 Advisory Committee and as a member of the 2020 Policy and Technical Coordinating Committees. Perhaps most significantly, he served as one of two development industry representatives on the special 2020 Drafting Committee charged with producing the new Comprehensive Plan and Land Development Code for the new Louisville and Jefferson County Metro Government.

As part of the merger of Louisville and Jefferson County government, Bill served on the County Attorney’s “Consolidated Local Government Legal Task Force” and as Chairman of its “Land Use Subcommittee”.  He also served on the special Transportation Systems Development Fee Ordinance Drafting Committee charged with developing a funding mechanism for the improvement of county roads. And he helped develop the new system for “Recapture” of excess sanitary sewer service costs when developers are charged by MSD with improving a sanitary sewer system for an entire watershed beyond a development’s specific sanitary sewer service needs.

Bill recently served on newly elected Mayor Greg Fischer’s “Transition Team”, drafted his “SWAT Analysis” for reform of the Department of Planning and Design Services, and served on his Planning and Design Services Audit Committee.

 For 5 years, Bill served on the Executive Committee of the Louisville Area Chamber of Commerce (now "Greater Louisville, Inc." or "GLI") with specific responsibility for overseeing its land use, transportation, environmental and governmental affairs programs. For a number of years, Bill also served on the Board of Directors of the Kentuckiana Regional Planning and Development Agency.

Bill is active in the Home Builders Association of Louisville, serving on its Land Development Committee, as Chairman of its Land Development Code Review Committee and for many years on its Board of Directors. In 1995 and 2002, he was recognized as the Home Builders “Associate (non-builder) of the Year.” Bill has also served as an adjunct faculty member teaching land use law to Ph.D and Masters Degree students in the Department of Urban and Public Affairs at the University of Louisville, has lectured widely on land use and development law issues, and is the general editor of four volumes of law books (Kentucky Methods of Practice) published by the nation’s leading law publisher, West Publishing Company, including a volume (which he authored) on Kentucky land use and zoning law.

Bill served as Chairman of the Louisville Bar Association’s Real Estate and Zoning Section, as Co-Chair of its “Committee of the Year” CLE Institute, and as Editor-in-Chief and founder of its Louisville Lawyer magazine.

Until 2003, Bill served for 9 years as Mayor of the suburban Louisville Metro city of Hurstbourne.

Bill's other professional and community recognitions and involvements, in addition to the above, over the years have included the following: various recognitions for service to the Louisville Bar Association, University of Louisville Law School, and Louisville area Chamber of Commerce; as President of the Hurstbourne Rotary Club; as founder and Board Member of Kentuckiana Crime Stoppers, Inc.; as Finance Committee Chairman and Board Member of Wesley Community House; as Chairman of the Board of the Louisville Gardens Arena Operating Company; as Consultant to the American Bar Association; and as St. Matthews Little League coach.

Ben J. Talbott, Jr. has been a member of the Kentucky Bar Association since 1965. He is a magna cum laude graduate of Xavier University and a 1964 graduate of Harvard Law School. While at Harvard, Ben wrote his thesis on the legal complications and conflicts of sales and use taxes in various states, which was submitted by Harvard to the U.S. congress where it was used in connection with drafting of federal legislation.  Upon graduation from law school. Ben clerked for U.S. District Judge Henry L. Brooks, Western District of Kentucky at Louisville. In 1965, he joined Middleton, Seelbach, Wolford, Willis, & Cochran where he made partner in 1968. After leaving that firm in 1980, Ben founded Westfall, Talbott, & Woods. Following Mr. Westfall's retirement from that firm on December 31, 1999, Ben re-established the firm as Talbott & Talbott, PLLC, which later merged into Bardenwerper and Talbott, & Roberts, PLLC. Ben's practice principally includes commercial litigation, including fraud cases, contract cases, mortgage foreclosures, and general corporate work.

Ben has served on a number of corporate boards, including Stitzel-Weller Distillery, Alumina Ceramics, Inc., (former Chairman) and Strategia Corporation.  In 1970, along with Randoph Reynolds, Ben founded Alumina Ceramic, Inc. and built a factory in Benton, Arkansas to make high tech seal rings for drilling oil.  In 1979, Ben and Reynolds sold the company to Coors Technology, Inc. 

In addition, Ben has been active in civic affairs and has served as a board member and officer of many civic organizations.  He was a board member for eight years and Vice-Chairman of the University of Louisville Board of Trustees, having been appointed to the Board first by Governor Louie Nunn and later by Governor Wendell Ford.  For a few years Ben served as Chairman of the University’s finance Committee, as well as serving on other University Committees.  He was also a board member of the University of Louisville Foundation and of the University of Louisville Medical School Fund Corporation.  

In support of the arts Ben was a board member and officer of the Louisville Theatrical Association (past President), the Louisville Orchestra (past President), Macauley Theatre, Inc. (past Secretary), and the Kentucky Center for the Arts (on which he served as a Board member for 26 years), and the Advisory Board of WKPC Channel 15 (past President).  In addition, Ben has served as a board member of the Historic Homes Foundation (past Vice-President), Locust Grove, the historic home of George Rogers Clark (past Treasurer), and Whitehall (past Chairman).

Ben has served local government as a board member and/or advisor of the Transportation Authority of River City (TARC) Advisory Committee, the Jefferson County Capital Construction Finance Committee, and the Institute of Industrial Development.  During the years in which Todd Hollenbach served as Jefferson County Judge-Executive, Ben was a key advisor to County government, and in 1975 Ben chaired Hollenbach’s unsuccessful state-wide primary race for Governor.

In 1994, Ben was appointed under President Clinton as an original member to the Board of the Defense Enterprise Fund.  The DEF, which was the brain child of Secretary of Defense William Perry, was funded by Congress pursuant to the Nunn-Lugar program and the Defense Security Act of 1994 for the purpose of assisting in the elimination and/or conversion of those facility located in the former Soviet Union which were used by the Soviet Union for the building of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons of mass destruction.  As an example, the very first project of the DEF was to convert a facility for manufacturing nuclear submarines into a company manufacturing heavy construction equipment.  Ben served on the DEF Board until the expiration of its mission term in 2006.

Ben presently serves on the Board and is Second Deputy Governor of the Kentucky Society of Mayflower Descendants (former Acting Assistant Governor General), and is the Assistant Treasurer General of the National Society of Mayflower Descendants, and is on the boards of the Phi Kappa Phi Honor Society (University of Louisville) of which he is a member, board member and Treasurer, and was formerly on the Board of the Harvard Law School Alumni Association of Kentucky, which he served first as Secretary in 1985, and later as President from 1989 to 2005.

Ben practices before both state and federal courts. He is a member of the American, Kentucky, and Louisville Bar Associations, the Defense Research Institute, the Association of the Trial Lawyers of American and the Supreme Court Historical Society. He has been named as one the best lawyers in America in Who's Who in American Law, America's Registry of Outstanding Registry of Outstanding Professionals, and the recent Editions of Martindale-Hubbell's Bar Register of Preeminent Lawyers. Since 1989, Ben has served as President of the Harvard Alumni Association of Kentucky.

Alex F. Talbott, of-counsel to the firm, is a native Louisvillian who has been practicing Land Use Law throughout Kentucky, but primarily in Jefferson County, for nearly 30 years.  Alex began concentrating in land use law representing the Louisville and Jefferson County Planning Commission and local Board of Zoning Adjustment as their legal counsel.  He held those positions for twelve years, after which he began representing developers and property owners in their dealings with local government regulators.

 Alex obtained his law degree at the University of Louisville and graduated with a degree in Economics from Georgetown University in Washington, DC.  Alex has been a frequent instructor at continuing legal education seminars.  He is a member of the Kentucky Bar Association, he is also a member of the Louisville Bar Association and the American Bar Association. 

 Alex serves on the Land Development and Codes Committees of the Home Builders Association of Louisville.  He served as a member of the Transportation Committee for the Governor’s Task Force on Smart Growth, the Mobility Committee for Cornerstone 2020 and the Mobile Source Committee of the Air Pollution Control District’s State Implementation Plan Advisory Committee.  Alex has also served on the Legislative Committee of the Kentucky Chapter of the American Planning Association.

J. Bissell Roberts joined the firm in April 2005. He previously practiced (since 1971) as a partner with one of Louisville's largest firms. He specializes in land use law, zoning eminent domain, commercial litigation, and family law. He was a member of the Honors Program at the University of Kentucky, where he obtained a degree in economics. In 1971 he graduated from the University of Virginia Law School, where he was Business Editor of the Virginia Law Weekly, Bissell has over forty years experience as a trial lawyer, trying cases in state and federal courts across Kentucky and practicing before the Kentucky Court of Appeals and Supreme Court, the Sixth and Seventh Circuit Courts of Appeal, the United States Tax Court and the United States Supreme Court.  He has represented developers, small businesses, Fortune 500 companies, automobile dealers, seminaries, fire departments, cemeteries, public utilities and county governments in land use matters.  He was legal counsel for Jefferson County’s first cable television company, the Regional Airport Authority (in acquiring major commercial properties for the recent expansion of Louisville’s Airport) and clients, large and small, in contract, business litigation, governmental litigation, employment, personal injury, and professional malpractice cases. He is currently representing property owners, including several homeowners, a marina owner and a developer in condemnation cases involving the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet and the property east end bridge in Jefferson County, Kentucky.

In 2008, 2009 and 2011, Bissell was recognized by his legal peers and Louisville Magazine as one of Louisville's "Top Lawyers." He has an AV Preeminent rathing by Martindale-Hubbell.  In 2003 Bissell completed the “CIVIL MEDIATION TRAINING” course conducted by Kentucky’s Administrative Office of the Courts. He has over thirty five years experience in representing clients in mediation and arbitration.  Bissell is now available to serve as a private mediator and private arbitrator.

Bissell is the Co-Founder of the Louisville Bar Association’s “Young Lawyers Section”, a former City Police Court Judge and in 1997 was appointed Special Justice to the Kentucky Supreme Court.  He authored the case of Commonwealth v. Stallard, Ky., 958 S.W.2d 21 (1998).  Bissell has written and lectured extensively.  He is the author of the Kentucky Rules of Evidence (1996), and a contributing author to Kentucky Business Guide; Builder/Architect Magazine, and The National Business Institute.

Bissell is a frequent lecturer for the National Business Institute, making recent presentations on “Land Use Law and Planning”, “Eminent Domain in Kentucky”, “Current Issues of Subdivision and Zoning Law” (see available Firm Articles).  In January 2003, Bissell organized and helped present a seminar on “Zoning and Land Use” for the newly elected Louisville Metro Council members and their staff.  He presented topics on dealing with the Planning Commission, suggested procedures for Metro Council members in zoning cases and the rules for quorum and voting in zoning cases. 

Bissell is an active member of the U K and U VA Alumni Associations and the Henry Clay High School Hall of Fame Committee.  He is a graduate of the 2000 class of “Leadership Oldham County”.  In 1971 he founded of the Commonwealth Athletic Club, which presents the Adolph Rupp Trophy to the “National Player of the Year” in men’s college basketball.

You may contact Bissell on Facebook.

John C. Talbott has practiced law for 10 years, largely in the areas of commercial transactions and real estate, as well as in commercial/civil litigation on behalf of employers and insurers since he was admitted to the Bar in 1994. He began his career working for several years with one of the largest firms in Kentucky before leaving to start his own firm, Talbott & Talbott, PLLC in 2000. He joined our present firm in 2004. John received his undergraduate degree from Vanderbilt University and his law degree from the University of Louisville. While in law school, he was an editor of the "Journal of Law and Education" and also clerked for the Kentucky Department of Labor. He has practiced before both state and federal courts, and extensively before state administrative agencies for workers' compensation.

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•Nanci Dively has served as a legal professional since 2001 after graduating Cum Laude from Sullivan University with a degree in Paralegal Studies. She has been a Land Use and Zoning Paralegal since 2005 and joined the firm in 2007.

•Anna Curley has served as a legal assistant since 1990 and now concentrates her practice in the areas of zoning and land use law, specializing in condominium regimes and homeowner associations.