About
The Global Climate Law Blog takes a multi-disciplinary approach to examining the emerging field of Climate Litigation. Our professionals bring backgrounds in Environmental and Tort Law, Securities Law, Government Enforcement, Insurance Law, Commercial Litigation and other areas of practice to bear in analyzing developments in Climate Litigation. We provide objective commentary and analysis of the cases and stories shaping this nascent area of law, bringing the information and insight readers need to stay on top of the issues together in one place.
Contributors:
Gil Keteltas (view full bio)
Partner, Washington, DC
Gilbert (Gil) Keteltas tries and litigates complex tort, environmental and commercial matters in federal, state and administrative courts. As lead trial counsel, Mr. Keteltas won an unprecedented trial verdict in a case of first impression against the California Air Resources Board. He also assisted in the defense and settlement of the largest mobile source enforcement action in history, and the second-largest environmental enforcement case ever tried to a jury. Recognized as a thought-leader on emerging climate change litigation matters, he acts as a trusted advisor to Fortune 500 clients on emerging litigation issues.
Joanne Lichtman (view full bio)
Partner, Los Angeles, CA
Joanne Lichtman represents clients in federal and state litigation throughout the United States. Her experience includes a broad array of substantive areas of commercial litigation, with particular expertise in complex tort, product liability, unfair competition, unfair business practices and a wide range of environmental matters (property and groundwater contamination, personal injury, Prop 65, Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act and Superfund). Ms. Lichtman has been named one of California’s top 75 Women Litigators by the Los Angeles/San Francisco Daily Journal, and has repeatedly been distinguished as one of Southern California’s ‘Super Lawyers’ in the area of Civil Litigation Defense.
Mary Andrues (view full bio)
Partner, Los Angeles, CA
Mary Carter Andrues focuses on complex commercial litigation, white collar criminal defense, internal corporate investigations, and international and domestic regulatory compliance and enforcement. Ms. Andrues is an experienced trial attorney with expertise in the areas of government program and procurement fraud, federal export control violations, FCPA, tax fraud, healthcare fraud, counter-espionage violations, public corruption and improper political contributions. Ms. Andrues is a former Assistant US Attorney for the Central District of California, where she served as the Chief of the Public Corruption and Civil Rights Section and Deputy Chief of the Public Corruption and Government Fraud Section.
Ty Childress (view full bio)
Partner, Los Angeles, CA
Ty Childress specializes in complex business and tort litigation with a focus on insurance coverage matters. Chambers USA ranks him among the top policyholder lawyers in the country, noting “when it comes to the crunch, you can rely on him to get results.” Mr. Childress conducts an active commercial litigation practice in a variety of other areas, including railroad, product defect, real estate, environmental, toxic tort, contract, fraud and indemnity disputes. He was part of a trial team that obtained one of the largest jury awards in California in the 1990s and has been involved in several landmark decisions. He has acted as lead counsel in arbitration proceedings and secured numerous multi-million dollar arbitration awards.
Paul Clarkson (view full bio)
Partner, Amsterdam, Netherlands
Paul Clarkson is qualified as a European and British patent attorney. He has a general engineering background, and has represented clients in connection with patents for low cost evaporative cooling equipment, wind turbine technology, and environmentally friendly textile finishing techniques. Mr. Clarkson advises clients across a broad range of industries covering agriculture and life sciences. His work encompasses all aspects of patent procurement, including applying for patents and conducting oppositions. Mr. Clarkson has first-hand knowledge of the internal procedure at the EPO, where he worked for 14 years as an examiner, specialised in the field of medical equipment.
Ben Davidson (view full bio)
Partner, Los Angeles, CA
Ben Davidson specializes in all aspects of intellectual property litigation, related complex litigation and counseling. He has successfully represented Fortune 500 corporations in patent infringement litigation involving a wide spectrum of technologies. He has also successfully litigated cases involving copyright infringement, trademark infringement, idea submissions, dilution, unfair competition, breach of contract, securities, antitrust and insurance coverage issues. Mr. Davidson is a former patent examiner with the US Patent & Trademark Office, where he examined applications involving power regulation and power conversion technology.
Alan Grimaldi (view full bio)
Partner, IP Practice Co-Chair, Washington, DC
Alan Grimaldi is a senior trial attorney. He has represented many clients in patent and other intellectual property litigation and has extensive experience with matters involving technical issues. His clients span a wide range of industries, including environmental services and pollution clean-up, energy and oil, manufacturing, banking, electronics, pharmaceuticals and consumer products. Mr. Grimaldi also has significant experience in all aspects of antitrust and other complex commercial litigation, including class action litigation, multi-district litigation, grand juries, administrative agency litigation, unfair competition, insurance coverage, products liability and trade-related matters.
John Horan (view full bio)
Of Counsel, East Palo Alto, CA
John Horan has represented clients in a broad spectrum of US and cross-border litigation and investigations, with particular focus on corporate governance and securities law, as well as the management, discovery and analysis of electronically stored information. Mr. Horan has represented individuals, corporations, boards of directors and board committees in hostile takeovers, proxy contests, founding shareholder disputes and other securities-related litigation. Mr. Horan is a seasoned software entrepreneur and programmer and has developed Web-based legal analysis tools combining relational databases, XML, XSLT and other data-storage technologies and programming languages.
Charles Kauffman (view full bio)
Senior Vice President, CapAnalysis, Washington, DC
Charles Kauffman specializes in research on how potential jurors understand and evaluate the arguments and evidence in a controversy before the matter comes to trial. Attorneys use this information to inform discovery, plan case strategy, evaluate themes and prepare for jury selection. Mr. Kauffman previously served as Director at Starr Litigation Services, where he conducted research for clients on a variety of high-stakes matters including antitrust, environmental, patent and mass tort litigation. His academic experience includes appointments at the University of Virginia, the University of Maryland, Northwestern University and California State University, Northridge.
.jpg)
David Lisi (view full bio)
Partner, East Palo Alto, CA
David Lisi represents US and international technology companies in matters concerning securities litigation and counseling, antitrust matters and complex civil, technology and IP litigation. Mr. Lisi advises corporate directors and defends individuals, companies and underwriters in shareholder class action lawsuits, merger and acquisition disputes and in proceedings before the Department of Justice, SEC and NASD. Mr. Lisi also has conducted numerous special investigations for audit committees and special litigation committees for clients in connection with securities and Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) issues.
Chris Marraro (view full bio)
Partner, Washington, DC
Chris Marraro litigates complex tort, environmental and commercial matters in federal, state and administrative courts. He defends clients in enforcement actions by state and federal agencies, product liability cases, toxic torts, citizen suits and other private party actions. His work has been focused in the petroleum and heavy manufacturing industries. From 1981 to 1986, Mr. Marraro was a Staff Attorney with the American Petroleum Institute in Washington DC. He is a former Chair of the ABA Annual Conference on Environmental Law and the Annual Fall Section Meetings. He is currently Chair of the Energy and Natural Resources Litigation Committee of the Environment, Energy and Resources Section of the ABA.
.jpg)
Andrew Ness (view full bio)
Partner, Washington, DC
Andrew Ness assists both owners and contractors with respect to troubled projects, solving complex construction and design-related problems without need for formal dispute resolution whenever practicable. In litigated matters, he has served as lead counsel on a wide variety of large construction disputes that were resolved in federal and state courts, and via both domestic and international arbitrations. Mr. Ness also has extensive experience in resolving disputes through the use of mediation and other alternative dispute resolution techniques, and has drafted and negotiated design and construction contracts for a wide range of major projects around the world.
Brian Rosenthal (view full bio)
Partner, Washington, DC
Brian Rosenthal's practice focuses on patent litigation and counseling, with a concentration on computer software and electronics. Mr. Rosenthal's experience spans a wide range of technologies, including cellular telephone remote programming, LAN switching and routing, business intelligence software, electronic procurement software, electronic patient diaries, microprocessor Java acceleration, golf ball construction, dynamic RAM modules, MP3 and JPEG compression, MRI, and pulse oximetry. Prior to law school, Mr. Rosenthal was a software developer and designed and developed features of a Windows-based automated auditing software package.
William Um (view full bio)
Partner, Los Angeles, CA
William Um specializes in complex business litigation, insurance coverage advice and related coverage litigation. He has advised and represented Fortune 500 companies, small businesses and individuals faced with substantial insurance coverage disputes involving, among other things, class actions, media liability, environmental contamination, directors and officers liability, asbestos and silicosis liability and various toxic tort matters. He has extensive experience in major, multiparty complex litigation matters in both state and federal courts. In addition to trial work, Mr. Um has obtained several multimillion-dollar arbitration awards and successfully negotiated numerous complex settlements.
Elizabeth Weaver (view full bio)
Partner, Los Angeles, CA
Elizabeth Weaver focuses on litigating environmental and toxic tort cases, with emphasis on hazardous waste, Superfund, air, and water issues. She has a track record of successfully litigating complex environmental matters, ranging from government enforcement to cost recovery to natural resource damages. Among other notable cases, Ms. Weaver litigated a landmark case in which the federal government was held responsible for all cleanup costs at the Del Amo Superfund Site after she proved at trial that World War II operations at the site were closely controlled by the United States. Ms. Weaver recently led a team serving as national coordinating counsel for environmental litigation for a major oil company.
Thomas Williams (view full bio)
Partner, Chicago, IL
Thomas Williams specializes in tradmark and unfair competition litigation, as well as trademark prosecution and counseling. His practice includes representing clients in federal district and appellate courts, and before the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board of the USPTO. He has also represented clients in alternative dispute resolution proceedings. Mr. Williams has extensive experience representing clients with both traditional trademarks and non-traditional marks, including trade dress, color marks, and sound marks. He has successfully represented brand owners in domain name disputes under the UDRP and ACPA.
John Wyckoff (view full bio)
Vice President - Environmental Consulting, CapAnalysis, Washington, DC
John Wyckoff is a certified professional geologist with over 20 years of experience providing environmental consulting services for clients in the areas of litigation, transactional due diligence, and compliance. He specializes in valuing environmental liabilities for purposes of insurance recovery, environmental litigation, site investigation and remediation, and strategic environmental management. Mr. Wyckoff also assists clients in addressing compliance issues involving all major federal and state statutes and implementing regulations covering site cleanup, hazardous waste management, wastewater and stormwater discharges, mobile and stationary source emissions, and product safety.
James Boles (view full bio)
Senior Associate, Washington, DC
James Boles spent six years as a policy analyst for the US Environmental Protection Agency in Washington, DC. In private practice, he has assisted in the litigation of complex environmental, commercial, and corporate responsibility matters in federal and state courts, as well as the representation of clients before federal and state administrative agencies. Mr. Boles’ experience includes analysis of a broad range of litigation and regulatory standards under, inter alia, the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, Comprehensive Environmental Response Compensation and Liability Act, Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, and Federal Insecticide Fungicide and Rodenticide Act.
Tara Kowalski (view full bio)
Senior Associate, Los Angeles, CA
Tara Kowalski focuses on complex business and tort litigation and insurance coverage litigation and counseling. She has represented clients in all stages of litigation in state and federal courts throughout the US in the areas of complex commercial contracts, insurance recovery, unfair competition and unfair business practices, and toxic tort. Ms. Kowalski has also been involved in designing and implementing e-discovery programs in response to the Amended Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. Ms. Kowalski received her JD from UC Davis, where she was the Editor-in-Chief of the UC Davis Law Review, and was a judicial extern for the Hon. Arthur R. Alarcon of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
Thomas Agnello (view full bio)
Associate, Washington, DC
Tom Agnello focuses on complex commercial litigation. He has represented a large agricultural biotech corporation in a Sherman §1 and §2 antitrust action brought by a putative class of direct purchasers of the herbicide glyphosate. He has also assisted a major brewer in obtaining summary judgment in a breach of contract action in federal court. Mr. Agnello received his J.D. from the University of Wisconsin Law School, where he was valedictorian and elected to the Order of the Coif. Mr. Agnello served as a member of the Wisconsin Moot Court Executive Board, Articles Editor for the Wisconsin International Law Journal, and judicial extern for the Hon. Charles N. Clevert, Jr. in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin.
Susanne Calabrese (view full bio)
Associate, Washington, DC
Susanne Calabrese focuses on securities litigation, complex commercial litigation, private antitrust litigation and insurance recovery. She also sustains a varied pro bono practice and has successfully represented an individual in a family law matter, counseled Holocaust survivors on obtaining reparations from the German government, and obtained political asylum for a Salvadoran human rights activist. She was previously a legal clerk at the US Attorney’s Office, Civil Division, in San Diego, and worked for the US DOJ, both in the Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Ms. Calabrese also worked with the Senate Judiciary Committee while interning for a US Senator.
Wendy Coats (view full bio)
Associate, Los Angeles, CA
Wendy Coats focuses her practice on white collar criminal defense and appellate work. Ms. Coats received her J.D. from Pepperdine University School of Law, where she was an active member of the moot court program, and Editor-in-Chief of Pepperdine Law Review, Volume XXXII. Following law school, Ms. Coats clerked for the Honorable Ronald S.W. Lew, Central District of California. Prior to law school, Ms. Coats was a high school English teacher in Columbia, Missouri where she received the Ray Lewis Excellence in Teaching Award: Beginning Teacher of the Year. In 1998, she was a member of the founding of Columbia Independent School where she was nominated and inducted into Phi Delta Kappa Honor Society.
Cyrus Frelinghuysen (view full bio)
Associate, Washington, DC
Cyrus Frelinghuysen specializes in intellectual property matters, particularly litigation arising from Section 337 investigations at the International Trade Commission. Mr. Frelinghuysen lived in Taiwan and China from 1997-2001 and 2003-2004, and has worked there in numerous capacities. While a graduate student at the Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies, he was an intern with the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, where he conducted research on public interest environmental litigation. Mr. Frelinghuysen received his J.D. from the Georgetown University Law Center, where he was executive editor of the Georgetown International Environmental Law Review.
Amy Garber (view full bio)
Associate, Washington, DC
Amy Garber practices in commercial trial litigation. Her experience with environmental law includes analysis of diesel emissions standards and federal preemption provisions of the Clean Air Act, as well as interim relief afforded in challenges under NEPA. Amy graduated from Cornell Law School, where she was a Notes Editor of the Cornell International Law Journal. During law school, she served as an Honors Fellow teaching assistant in the Cornell Lawyering Program. Prior to law school, Amy graduated magna cum laude from The George Washington University, where she obtained a BA in International Affairs and became a member of Phi Beta Kappa.
Benjamin Heath (view full bio)
Associate, San Francisco, CA
Benjamin Heath represents private owners, public entities, designers, engineers, and general contractors at each stage of construction litigation, with emphasis on delay, defect, and breach of contract claims. He has significant experience in discovery and motion practice, and alternative dispute resolution. Mr. Heath received his JD from the University of California, Davis. During law school, Mr. Heath worked as a judicial extern for the honorable Anthony W. Ishii of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of California.
Christopher Kellett (view full bio)
Associate, Washington, DC
Chris Kellett specializes in complex civil litigation, and also dedicates significant time to pro bono representation. He was recently involved in the successful respresentation of a stalking victim sued by a former boyfriend in federal court and successfully represented a Tibetan client in his application for asylum in the United States. During law school, Mr. Kellett was a writing fellow, teaching two semesters of Legal Research & Writing to first year law students. He also wrote appellate briefs while working in the Appellate Division of the US Attorney's Office in Washington DC as an intern and represented indigent criminal defendants in DC Superior Court as part of Georgetown's Criminal Justice Clinic.
Jenifer Liu
New York, NY
Jenifer Liu litigates complex tort, securities and commercial matters in federal and state courts. She has also represented individuals and companies in investigations conducted by the Securities Exchange Commission and the New York Attorney General's Office. As a student attorney in the Tulane Environmental Law Clinic, Ms. Liu was involved in environmental litigation involving public nuisance claims. She also served as a managing editor of the Tulane Environmental Law Journal and graduated with a Certificate of Environmental Law. Ms. Liu was a recipient of a Stone Center Summer Field Research Grant with which she conducted research in Cuba and Costa Rica on international environmental regulations.
Stephanie Stroup (view full bio)
Associate, Los Angeles, CA
Stephanie Stroup’s practice focuses on complex commercial litigation, including business torts, unfair competition, contract disputes, intellectual property and other commercial issues. Ms. Stroup also represents clients in environmental matters, including toxic torts and claims brought under the Clean Air Act, CERCLA, and HSAA. Ms. Stroup's cases have involved Fortune 500 companies across a broad spectrum of industries, including heavy machinery, oil and gas, poultry processing, waste hauling, internet and cosmetics. Ms. Stroup is a graduate of the University of Southern California Gould School of Law, where she was Articles Editor for the Southern California Law Review.
Lucy Jewett Wheatley (view full bio)
Associate, Washington, DC
Lucy Jewett Wheatley practices in the areas of appellate litigation, commercial trial, and intellectual property. She is currently working on a trial and appeal involving franchises and the enforceability of environmental requirements under the Petroleum Marketing Practices Act (PMPA). Ms. Wheatley graduated magna cum laude from George Mason University School of Law, where she was Editor-in-Chief of the George Mason Law Review. During law school, she completed an internship for the Solicitor-General of Virginia at the Virginia Attorney General's office, where she performed appellate work. Prior to law school, Ms. Wheatley volunteered for “Teach for America” for two years, teaching at an inner city high school in Baltimore.
