Do Big Firms’ Environmentalist Ties Collide with Their Energy Clients’ Interests?

Over the past decade, progressive states and municipalities across the nation have filed more than 40 climate change lawsuits against the American energy industry. The legal theory behind these claims, first pioneered by the climate plaintiffs’ firm Sher Edling, attempts to trace alleged damages from local weather events back to our nation’s largest energy producers.

For years, the Environmental Law Institute (ELI) has worked to sell the bench on these contested theories through its Climate Judiciary Project, laundering them into the courts under the banner of neutral judicial education. Most concerning is who else sits at ELI’s table: many of the same law firms representing the energy defendants against the plaintiff-side legal theories that ELI promotes. The institutional ties between these firms and ELI raise serious questions about potential conflicts of interest. At minimum, energy companies should ask whether their lawyers’ ELI affiliation undermines their defense.

AG

About the Author

Andrew Gould

Andrew Gould is a retired Justice of the Supreme Court of Arizona and the managing partner of the Phoenix office of Holtzman Vogel PLLC.

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Over the past decade, progressive states and municipalities across the nation have filed more than 40 climate change lawsuits against the American energy industry. The legal theory behind these claims, first pioneered by the climate plaintiffs’ firm Sher Edling, attempts to trace alleged damages from local weather events back to our nation’s largest energy producers.

For years, the Environmental Law Institute (ELI) has worked to sell the bench on these contested theories through its Climate Judiciary Project, laundering them into the courts under the banner of neutral judicial education. Most concerning is who else sits at ELI’s table: many of the same law firms representing the energy defendants against the plaintiff-side legal theories that ELI promotes. The institutional ties between these firms and ELI raise serious questions about potential conflicts of interest. At minimum, energy companies should ask whether their lawyers’ ELI affiliation undermines their defense.