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Seeger Weiss LLP is proud to announce that partner Matt Pawa and counsel Ben Krass were selected to the *2023 Lawdragon Green 500: Leaders in Environmental Law list, joining a “new generation of attorneys fighting to protect the environment.” Pawa leads Seeger Weiss’s environmental litigation practice, representing state and local governments in a wide range of environmental cases involving natural resource contamination, toxic pollution of air, water, and land, and the climate crisis. He joined the firm in February 2021, bringing with him a team of experienced environmental litigators, including Krass and Wesley Kelman, to the firm’s new Boston-area office.
Pawa has been selected to *Lawdragon’s list of leading environmental lawyers each time the list was published. He is a pioneer in the use of tort theories against polluters, including the climate change cases American Electric Power Co. v. Connecticut and Native Village of Kivalina v. ExxonMobil Corp. Pawa was named Massachusetts Lawyer of the Year in 2013 for his work representing the State of New Hampshire in a groundwater contamination case dealing with the gasoline additive MTBE that resulted in over $100 million in pre-trial settlements with some of the nation’s largest oil companies and a $236 million verdict against Exxon Mobil Corporation—the largest verdict in New Hampshire history. He also serves on the Plaintiffs Executive Committee of the PFAS Aqueous Film Forming Foam (AFFF) multidistrict litigation.
A first-time honoree on the *Lawdragon Green 500 list, Ben Krass is a seasoned environmental litigator with experience working on notable climate change cases, including Connecticut v. American Electric Power Company and Native Village of Kivalina v. ExxonMobil Corporation. Krass represented the state of New Hampshire from in litigation against major oil companies for statewide contamination of the state’s waters with the chemical and gasoline additive MTBE, helping obtain settlements of $136 million from approximately a dozen defendants. He participated in the three-month trial against ExxonMobil which resulted in a $236 million jury verdict against the company.
Currently, Pawa and Krass represent Vermont in litigation against 3M and Du Pont for pollution of the state’s land and waters with the PFAS “forever chemicals.” They also recently represented New Hampshire in litigation against Monsanto for pollution of state waters with PCBs, which resulted in a $25 million settlement in 2022, and continue to be active in PCBs litigation on behalf of the City of Los Angeles, Burlington School District, and other local government clients across the country.
*Lawdragon’s Green 500 selection methodology can be found here. No aspect of this advertisement has been approved by the Supreme Court of New Jersey or a court or authority of any jurisdiction.
Prior results do not guarantee or predict a similar outcome in any future matter.