Over the course of a yearlong investigation, Floodlight, Type Investigations and WWNO/WRKF examined the federal judges involved in a series of environmental damage lawsuits with huge stakes for communities in southern Louisiana. 

Our methodology began with building a detailed timeline to track the group of more than 40 connected cases through more than a decade of appeals that spanned four federal courts and 46 total judges. The timeline documented the shifting names and case numbers of each lawsuit, as well as the judges who made rulings in each case and the dates of their orders. We also built a searchable, comprehensive data set of all the lawyers, law firms, companies and judges involved in each case. 

We then investigated each of the 46 judges by reviewing thousands of pages of the financial disclosure reports they are required to file annually, as well as publicly available mineral lease agreements, land records, senate confirmation testimony and court records to build dossiers that documented the financial holdings and employment histories of each of the judges and their spouses. By comparing those findings to the database of companies and lawyers involved, we identified 12 judges with connections to defendants in the cases. 

Along the way, we spoke to experts in judicial ethics and disqualification, government officials, lawyers and judges involved in the series of cases, as well as landowners whose properties were damaged by oil extraction. Their perspectives helped us capture the full context of the court cases, the judiciary’s rules, and the consequences for people dealing with the damage alleged in the lawsuits. 

People we contacted for this story:

• Charles Geyh, professor at Indiana University Maurer School of Law 
• Arthur Hellman, professor emeritus at University of Pittsburgh School of Law
• Russell Wheeler, nonresident senior fellow at The Brookings Institution
• Vernon Valentine Palmer, co-director of Eason Weinmann Center for Comparative Law at Tulane University Law School
• Gabe Roth, executive director of Fix the Court
• Hon. Shira A. Scheindlin, attorney and former judge of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York
• Warren Perrin, attorney and author
• Mike Veron, attorney and author
• Allan Wolf, author
• John Barry, author, historian, adjunct professor at Tulane University
• Lyle Cayce, clerk of court, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit