Energy

Cases

• Bd. of Cnty. Comm'rs of Boulder Cnty. v. Crestone Peak Res. Operating LLC, No. 19CA2040 (Colorado Ct. App. 2021) – Won a published opinion for Crestone Peak Resources, protecting strategically important aspects of the company's original $900M investment and affirming the trial court's summary judgment rulings for WTO's client after Boulder County sought to invalidate several of the company's oil and gas leases.
• Successfully negotiated a class settlement—for 2.5% of the claimed damages—for a major utility provider and its subsidiary in a 15-year-old putative antitrust class action in Colorado federal court.
• United Power, Inc. et al. v. Tri-State Generation & Transmission Ass'n. Inc., No. 19F-0521E (Colo. Public Utilities Commission) - Won a $1.25 billion exit fee dispute for an electric distributor against its generation and transmission provider. The groundbreaking decision followed one of the first remote trials in the nation in the COVID-19 era.
• Serving as lead trial counsel for a public utility company in putative antitrust class actions in Colorado and Wisconsin alleging wholesale natural gas price manipulation and seeking damages in excess of $2 billion.
• Facilitated a rural electric cooperative's withdrawal from membership in a wholesale cooperative. WTO's client achieved settlement for hundreds of millions of dollars below the wholesaler's demand and can now acquire substantially cheaper and renewable green energy sources for its members.
• Represented a wholesale energy company in a multi-jurisdictional dispute with multiple counterparties, preserving tens of millions of dollars of contract value and a key long-term business objective for the client.
• Won a multimillion-dollar arbitration award for an energy company, recovering more than 15 times the last settlement offer made before trial.
• Won affirmance preserving WTO's trial court dismissal of a wrongful termination lawsuit involving the public policy exception to employment at will.
• Belmont v. BP America Production (D. Wyo. 2015) - Defeated class certification for BP in a natural gas royalties underpayment case heard in federal court in Wyoming.
• Won an arbitration award for future oil and gas royalties valued between $70,000,000 and $100,000,000 in a David v. Goliath case against a multinational oil company.
• Juwi Solar v. Maynard (Colo. Boulder Cnty. Dist. Ct. 2013) - Successfully represented employers in noncompete and trade secret litigation, including obtaining injunctive relief against a former employee of a solar power plant developer for violation of noncompete and nondisclosure agreements.
• Vestas Blades v. Randall (Colo. 2011) - Won a $4.2 million judgment for a renewable energy client in a civil trial involving an executive's embezzlement from the company.
• Mulcahy v. Rapid American (Ill. Cook Cnty. Cir.Ct.) - Won a jury verdict in Cook County, Illinois, for General Electric in an asbestos duty to warn case involving power plant land turbines.
• Obtained summary judgment for Lockheed Martin with regard to the majority of potentially $2 billion in exposure in a major federal False Claims Act case in Idaho. Allegations included false claims associated with a contract for management of the U.S. Department of Energy facility in Idaho Falls, ID. Following summary judgment, the remainder of the case settled favorably.