“Plaintiffs’ lawyers had won judgments and settlements in Louisiana cases demanding the cleanup of oil field contamination. The flood protection authority hired one of them — Gladstone N. Jones III of New Orleans — and constructed arguments evocative of those used 30 years earlier against Big Tobacco: Energy companies had known for decades that they were destroying the marsh but ignored legal and contractual obligations to repair it, at great cost to taxpayers.”
March 6, 2018