Energy
- Representing a multinational energy company challenging a de facto moratorium on the issuance of well stimulation permits by the State of California, including claims that the state officials lack statutory authority to adopt a de facto moratorium, and that the agency has implemented an underground regulation.
- Representing an energy company in challenging a California statute that singles out the client’s operations for draconian penalties to force the abandonment of low-production wells and then all operations at a particular oil field. A lawsuit has been filed alleging various constitutional and statutory challenges against the state’s implementation of this statute.
- Prevailed on behalf of an oil and gas exploration and production company in invalidating the City of Los Angeles Oil and Gas Ordinance, which banned the drilling, redrilling, and maintenance of existing wells and required the removal of existing operations after an amortization period. This decision was one of the first to apply the pivotal decision by the California Supreme Court in Chevron U.S.A. v. County of Monterey, and the court concluded that the City’s ordinance was preempted by state law, which vests exclusive authority with the state to regulate the methods and practices of oil production, not local governments.
- Represented a multinational energy corporation and one of the largest public companies worldwide in a challenge to a countywide ballot initiative that would immediately prohibit well stimulation and the drilling of new wells, and would impose a sunset date for the injection or impoundment of produced water. If implemented, the ballot initiative would have shut down all operations in the eight-largest oil field in the state. The California Supreme Court held that the initiative was preempted by state law, and that local governments cannot contradict a state statute by providing that the state agency has authority to determine the appropriate methods of oil production in each suitable case.
- Represented an energy company, royalty owner, and trade association in a challenge to a county’s general plan amendment that would severely restrict ongoing oil operations throughout Ventura County, CA. The action also challenged the environmental impact report adopted for the amendment as failing to consider the potentially significant environmental impacts that would result from implementation of the new policies. The parties reached a favorable settlement.
- Defended an energy company against a local agency’s efforts to eliminate or amortize oil operations. Negotiated a settlement agreement with Culver City regarding the City’s amortization ordinance to eliminate oil operations. Facilitated a permitting dispute in the City of Los Angeles to allow for redevelopment of the site.
Environmental Litigation and Enforcement
- Defending a real estate development company in one of the largest ongoing toxic tort mass actions pending in the Northern District of California, involving over 9,500 community members, seeking personal injury and property damage from alleged exposures to radioactive substances at a former naval shipyard that is the subject of San Francisco’s largest development project in a century.
- Representing a real estate development company in litigation against a federal contractor and the United States regarding the falsified investigation and remediation of radiological contamination at a Superfund site.
- Defended one of the world’s largest private sector energy companies against multiple lawsuits brought by various California municipalities, who were alleging claims for public and private nuisance, product liability, and deceptive sales while also attempting to shift liability for national and international climate change policy choices onto energy producers. The municipalities sought damages tied to greenhouse-gas emissions between 1965 and 2015. The client was dismissed from the lawsuits with prejudice.