EPA headquarters. Credit: Diego M. Radzinschi / NLJ

A team of plaintiffs lawyers who successfully challenged the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's effort to delay implementation of an oil and gas rule are asking a federal appeals court to award more than $300,000 in legal fees.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit last year rebuked the Trump administration's EPA for pausing enforcement of Obama-era regulations concerning methane and other greenhouse gas emissions. The rule imposed certain air-pollutant monitoring and reporting requirements on oil and gas companies.

“The regulation EPA unlawfully tried to suspend has now been in effect for more than two years, and all compliance deadlines passed over a year ago, helping to reduce pollution emissions that, according to EPA, 'endanger both the public health and the public welfare of current and future generations,'” the petitioners wrote in a court filing Monday at the D.C. Circuit. Second annual reports on leak-detection monitoring are due at the end of October.

Susannah Weaver, a partner at the Washington appellate boutique Donahue, Goldberg & Weaver, is seeking fees at $689 hourly, according to court papers submitted Monday in the D.C. Circuit. Weaver was lead counsel for petitioners including Clean Air Council, Earthworks and the Environmental Defense Fund.

Weaver formerly clerked for Justice Stephen Breyer in 2012 and, before joining Donahue Goldberg, was a senior associate on the appellate team at Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe. Weaver billed $705 hourly at Orrick in 2016, according to Monday's court filing.

“This was also a hard-fought case, involving matters of national interest. A dozen states and state agencies intervened to defend EPA, along with more than 20 industry parties, represented by prominent private counsel,” Weaver wrote in the court papers. The challengers said they were submitting billing records for only four lawyers who worked on the case, eliminating “more than 280 hours actually expended on this litigation.”

Sean Donahue, a name partner at Donahue Goldberg, submitted billing records for $764 an hour. Donahue, a founding member of the firm, formerly clerked for then-Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the D.C. Circuit and later for Justice John Paul Stevens in 1993. Donahue formerly was an associate in the Washington office of Jenner & Block.

Fellow name partner David Goldberg also clerked for then-Judge Ginsburg and for Justice David Souter. Their Supreme Court clerkships coincided with those of fellow clerks Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh. Goldberg is also of counsel to the Stanford Law School Supreme Court Clinic.

Former Jenner appellate partner Paul Smith, writing in a declaration to the D.C. Circuit, said Donahue's “deep understanding of the Clean Air Act” is “matched by few other attorneys in the United States.”

Weaver said the plaintiffs tried to negotiate with the EPA over legal fees, “but those efforts were unsuccessful.” A spokesperson for the EPA said the agency would not comment on pending litigation. The EPA will have a chance to content the plaintiffs' fee request.

 

The plaintiffs' fee petition is posted below:

 

 

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Tony Mauro contributed reporting from Washington.