Category: Firm News

On Friday, March 29, 2013, ExxonMobil’s Pegasus pipeline, which transported heavy tar sands crude oil from Canada throughout the United States, failed in the middle of a residential subdivision in Mayflower, Arkansas, resulting in the release of thousands of barrels of heavy crude into the subdivision’s streets, residents’ yards, storm sewers, and Lake Conway, a 6,700 acre lake connected to several creeks and used for recreational fishing.  The rupture led to the evacuation and permanent displacement of many residents, the presence of toxic petroleum fumes in and around Mayflower for many weeks, and a year long clean-up which transformed much of Mayflower into an industrial work zone. 

Davis & Whitlock, along with a local Arkansas law firm Mickel & Chapman, filed suit on behalf of the Mayflower residents in April 2013. After two years of intensive litigation in a case that captured national attention, a settlement was achieved on terms that were satisfactory to the Plaintiffs and held ExxonMobil accountable for the Pegasus Pipeline Disaster.

Davis & Whitlock, PC, along with Alabama firms Friedman, Dazzio, Zulanas & Bowling, PC and the Cole Law Firm, is proud to announce the West Morgan – East Lawrence Water Authority began construction on a reverse osmosis filtration system in January of 2020.

This filtration system is the result of the settlement of a three-year long lawsuit against 3M, and will effectively filter out all types of PFAS chemicals from the Authority’s water intake, located on the Tennessee River downstream of 3M’s Decatur, Alabama plant. In so doing, it will bring residents of Lawrence and Morgan counties some of the cleanest water in the country.

For more information, see the linked article below:

Lawsuit funded water treatment plant being built in Lawrence County

Davis & Whitlock, P.C., is pleased to announce that Emily Stein, a NY-licensed attorney, has recently joined the firm as an associate attorney.  Emily holds an LL.M.  in Environmental Law & Policy from Lewis & Clark Law School and a J.D. from New York Law School. Following law school, Emily worked as a Staff Attorney for the New York State Court of Appeals and then relocated to the West Coast to specialize in environmental law, where she engaged in legal and advocacy work for various non-profits, including Western Resource Advocates, Recycle Utah, and the Surfrider Foundation. For the past few years, Emily has been pursuing a Ph.D. in Sweden, but is excited to be back in the U.S. and return to the practice of public interest environmental law with Davis & Whitlock.

In a precedent setting Order issued August 23, 2019, a federal judge has ruled that a lawsuit brought by a group of residents of Bennington and North Bennington, Vermont damaged by PFOA groundwater contamination can proceed against defendant Saint-Gobain Performance Plastics as a class action. These residents, who are represented by Davis & Whitlock, P.C. and Vermont law firms Langrock, Sperry, & Wool, LLP and Barr, Sternberg, Moss, Silver, & Munson P.C., seek property damages due to the contamination of their drinking water and medical monitoring due to their exposure to PFOA and increased risk of disease. As a result of this Order, Davis & Whitlock and its Vermont co-counsel will now pursue these claims against Saint-Gobain on behalf of all Bennington residents similarly impacted by this PFOA contamination.

Judge grants class status in Bennington PFOA lawsuit

https://vtdigger.org/2019/08/23/judge-grants-class-status-in-bennington-pfoa-lawsuit/