The Simpson Law Firm

I’ve litigated and mediated cases of all kinds, including these:

• Federal, state, and administrative litigation with hundreds of millions of dollars in value, including CERCLA, RCRA, CWA, and CAA, As well as state claims claims.
• Cases involving governmental entities, Fortune 500 companies, insurers and individuals.
• Governmental entities and represented Fortune 500 and other companies, as well as individuals.

 I’ve also litigated environmental matters with toxic tort issues involving more than 6,000 plaintiffs seeking more than $3.6 billion. 

 I have litigated a large alternative-energy case, a $100-million lawsuit in which a developer sued my client, a public official, for fraud, violations of an open-meetings statute, violations of planning-and-land-use laws pertaining to addenda to specific and general plans, improper downzoning, inverse condemnation, negligent misrepresentation, and other claims.

That case involved 12,000 acres that a developer owned in rural East San Diego County—he wanted to develop the acreage into a large wind farm, a solar farm, and related residential housing. The case lasted roughly a year in the acute litigation phase, with voluminous public-records requests evidencing the developer’s years-long efforts to develop the property—efforts that pissed off the local public at the outset.

Among other things, the townspeople complained of windmills causing brush fires (a major concern to those living in rural San Diego) and low-frequency noise and vibrations leading to human-health problems. They complained about windmills toppling in windstorms, crushing people and animals beneath and about solar farms causing migratory-bird deaths when birds perceived the farms as lakes, landing on them and burning to death. They were concerned about transmission-line corridor problems and wind-tower anemometers and directional vanes (for wind-strength measurement and mapping) that were eyesores or were not properly permitted. Also, the townspeople perceived the developer as sneaky—not a good person—a very important consideration to those in San Diego’s outback who value a straight-shooter. The developer could have succeeded in developing the property—but didn’t. The developer could have addressed these problems in ways that could have achieved success—but didn’t. The developer lost the litigation—and the value of its 12,000 acres of property.

I also represented a group of paraglider pilots hoping to persuade SEMPRA Energy to reroute high-powered electrical-transmission lines, part of the Sunrise Powerlink, away from the base of a mountain that was a popular paragliding spot. They didn’t want the lines to cross through the Cleveland National Forest and across a lake basin, preferring to have the lines routed along a highway, along with other power lines.

I have litigated a 300-mile-long natural-gas pipeline case (a $3.4 billion case involving 6,000 claimants, in which I served as managing defense counsel—a case portrayed in the movie Erin Brockovich) and two bulk-fuel storage-facility cases—as well as many UST cases pertaining to petroleum hydrocarbons.

I’ve also litigated a variety of dry cleaner cases, former manufacturing sites, landfill cases, railroad property cases, municipal burn-dump sites, ocean bottom sediment cases, stormwater cases, and cases involving contaminated streams, creeks, and lakes.