On April 23, 2001, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review a lower court ruling that favors plaintiffs over defendants in environmental cases. The decision was a setback for WLF, which filed a certiorari petition seeking Supreme Court review of the case. WLF represented a small Chicago company that successfully defended a lawsuit filed against it by a large environment group and then attempted to recover some of the hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees it paid to defend the suit — costs that contributed to the company’s bankruptcy filing earlier this year. WLF argued that the federal statutes permitting the award of fees to “prevailing parties” in environmental suits do not differentiate between prevailing plaintiffs and prevailing defendants and thus the latter should not be discriminated against in fee awards. WLF has pledged to continue its efforts to overturn case law that discriminates against environmental defendants.
