Rival law firm sues over DOE selection

Benjamin Grove

Friday, July 27, 2001 | 4:55 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- Winston & Strawn, a Yucca Mountain project law firm, is not a stranger to conflict-of-interest charges.

Two years after the Energy Department awarded the Chicago-based law firm a $16.5 million contract to review Yucca Mountain documents, it is still fending off allegations on several fronts.

A rival law firm that lost a bid for the DOE job in 1999 filed a lawsuit alleging that Winston & Strawn could not independently review the DOE license application for Yucca because the firm helped prepare it in the first place.

The application was drafted for the DOE by what was then its top Yucca contractor, TRW Environmental Safety Services Inc. But it was Winston & Strawn that TRW hired to review the application to make sure it addressed all legal points required by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Critics say the firm can't fairly critique its own work.

Nevada lawmakers protested to the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress. The GAO dismissed the complaint.

So the rival firm, LeBoeuf, Lamb, Greene & MacRae, sued the DOE and Winston & Strawn, alleging the firm had an "organizational conflict of interest" and could not represent the department. Winston & Strawn would not comment for this story, but its lawyers have mounted an aggressive defense in U.S. District Court in Washington. The case is pending.

Both Winston & Strawn and LeBoeuf earned a perfect score on the DOE's bid evaluation. LeBoeuf's bid was $3.7 million higher than Winston's.

Meanwhile, Nevada has objected to Winston & Strawn, too. Most recently, Attorney General Frankie Sue Del Papa asked the courts to clarify whether Winston & Strawn had previously worked for the DOE. If so, the firm should have disclosed that before making its bid.

Del Papa said that Winston & Strawn represented Flour-Daniel, another DOE contractor at its Hanford, Wash., facility, a site that once produced nuclear weapons. Hanford's wastes could one day come to Yucca Mountain. DOE acted against Flour-Daniel in May 1999, so if Winston & Strawn represented both DOE and TRW at the time, there could be a conflict of interest, she said.

And the state's DOE watchdog, Bob Loux of the Agency for Nuclear Projects, this month submitted an affidavit alleging other problems ahead for Winston & Strawn.

Loux notes the NRC, among other observers, is going to be scrutinizing the DOE's license to bury waste at Yucca. He said the NRC will inevitably question some of TRW's work.

Loux said Winston & Strawn is required to tell the DOE about any flaws in TRW's work that would affect the license. But to do that, the law firm may have to betray former client TRW.

"If Winston cannot give independent advice to DOE about TRW's performance, problems with TRW's work may never be discovered and resolved," Loux wrote.

"When issues about TRW's performance are raised by NRC, DOE or any other party in the licensing process, Winston will have a conflicting duty to avoid advice to DOE that would penalize TRW."

Sun reporter

Mary Manning contributed to this report.