Thursday, 16 May 2002

ST. PAUL, Minn.

Well, it happened again. In my zeal the other day to name my colleagues in this legal battle against Gopher State Ethanol, I left a name off the list, and of course, she noticed. I should be ashamed of myself: Dori Ullman is one of my best friends and a person who never fails to step forward when her community calls. Maybe because I’m so used to that, her name slipped from my head. When you work closely and intensely with many people for many months, you have to mentally “go around the table” when listing your allies, and sometimes the most familiar get skipped over.

Damn.

Dori’s one of those people for whom the term “trenches” was invented. Never mind the task, never mind the commitment required, she is among those who always nod, never shake, their heads.

She’s also among those who are still waiting for that court ruling on the city’s motion citing Gopher State Ethanol with contempt for failing to meet the terms of the settlement. I’m waiting, too, but to be honest, I don’t even know if winning will make any difference. That ruling will be appealed, and while the appeals process drags on, GSE will continue to violate the promises it made to relieve the city of noise and odor pollution from the ethanol plant.

Not that I regret this courtroom battle. The legal eagles working on our behalf have proven themselves among the most capable I’ve ever seen; we were lucky to stumble onto them. At the time, all that existed to counter the ethanol plant was a little ad hoc committee organized under the auspices of the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy. The committee members (myself included) set about looking for ways to force public agencies to do their jobs, and decided that to do so, we needed outside legal help. MCEA’s charter prevents the organization from representing small citizens groups in civil cases, meaning Janette Brimmer, the center’s attorney who had been helping us, had done all she could.

So off we all went to see who would be nuts enough to take on our cause. I happened to be working on a candidate’s campaign for the St. Paul School Board at the time, and was walking out of a committee meeting one evening with a colleague, attorney Mike Unger, when it dawned on me: maybe Mike. He works for a pretty big firm. And living in St. Paul, he suffered from the ethanol-fouled air in his own neighborhood.

“Say, Mike, ol’ buddy, ol’ pal. How would you guys like to take on a solid environmental case — pro bono?” I asked, feeling pretty sure that he’d laugh in my face when I mentioned the target.

“I dunno. Tell me about it.”

“A bunch of folks in West 7th who can’t breathe or sleep because of the ethanol plant want to take the company to court. I mean, these people are really sick and tired of what’s going on.”

“Hmmm. I think I like the idea. Let me bounce it off my partners.”

The partners are some of the best lawyers in Minnesota, and probably in the country. Both Mike and his wife are in the firm. Mike’s a partner; Jeanne’s an associate. The firm, Rider, Bennett, Egan & Arundel, is based in Minneapolis, which helped, because a Minneapolis firm has fewer conflicts than a St. Paul one. It’s also one of Minnesota’s top five law firms, so when Mike gave us the thumbs up on representing us, we were ecstatic.

RBEA has treated us as major clients, piling on resources and personnel to supplement Mike as lead counsel. Mike has poured his heart as well as his head into this effort. And his substitutes when he wasn’t available have also been excellent — and in one case, downright brilliant.

Preparing for his contribution to the final arguments in the contempt case, Peter Gray spotted a previous case where the lawyers successfully argued that a lawsuit settlement document was a contract between the parties and that failure to satisfy the settlement’s provision was more than contempt of court; it was breach of contract. When Peter shared this with the judge, he sat up in his seat on the bench and verbally acknowledged that this was a wrinkle he’d never considered. That was fun to watch.

Mike himself must have a photographic memory. Once he takes information in, he can spit it back out with nary a reference to his notes. And his strategy has both surprised us and served us well.

Unfortunately, it’s been a sad few months for Mike. In the midst of this legal work, his mother lay dying of lung cancer at the Mayo Clinic down in Rochester. She died on May 8 — a mercifully peaceful death, but it was a long haul for the family and Mike persevered in his work throughout the ordeal.

CASE is so grateful to this guy and his colleagues, we’ll never be able to express it adequately.