JIM WEDEKING is an environmental litigator, representing large companies and industry trade associations in trial and appellate courts, as well as before administrative agencies. His experience includes the defense of criminal and civil enforcement actions, toxic tort defense, permit appeals, rulemaking challenges, and complex civil litigation. A key aspect of Mr. Wedeking’s practice includes developing an involved understanding of how a client’s facilities function, given the complex scientific and technical issues that are typically the subject of litigation. These clients have included those in the oil and gas, electric power, chemical manufacturing, and agricultural industries.
Selected Representations
- Lead council for a commodities trading company in toxic tort litigation involving alleged MTBE contamination in California, New Jersey, and New York.
- Second chair in an evidentiary hearing for review of a mining permit before a state administrative board and argued the case on appeal in state court.
- Represented companies and industrial trade associations in numerous rulemaking challenges and permit appeals as petitioners, intervenors and amici curiae before U.S. Courts of Appeal and the EPA’s Environmental Appeals Board.
- Organized the response of multiple clients in the manufacturing and electric power industries to grand jury subpoenas and EPA information requests.
- Defended a major agricultural company in a suit alleging interstate water pollution and involving novel issues under the Clean Water Act, RCRA, CERCLA, tort law and constitutional law.
Selected Presentations and Publications
- Up In the Air: The Future of Environmental Management for Hydraulic Fracturing Will be About Air, Not Water, Idaho Law Rev. (forthcoming 2013), presented at Legal Aspects of Hydraulic Fracturing: An Idaho Law Review Symposium (Mar. 29, 2013)
- Jim Wedeking, Maximum Contaminant Levels and Environmental Injuries, 28 J. Contemp. Health L. & Pol’y 183 (2012)
- Jim Wedeking, Environmental Federalism, in Jim May, Ed., Principles of Environmental Constitutional Law (ABA/ELI, 2011)
- Jim Wedeking, Addressing Judicial Resistance to Reciprocal Reliance Standing in Administrative Challenges to Environmental Regulations, 14 N.Y. Univ. Env. Law J. 535 (2006)
- Contributing author, Nanotechnology Briefing Paper: Clean Water Act, American Bar Association, Section of Environment, Energy, and Resources (2006)