Energy Department. to hire new law firm

Benjamin Grove

Friday, May 30, 2003 | 9:26 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- A federal court has paved the way for the Energy Department to hire a law firm to handle its Yucca Mountain legal work, 18 months after its former firm quit amid conflict-of-interest allegations.

Chicago-based Winston & Strawn withdrew from its $16.5 million contract in November 2001 after it was revealed the firm had ties to the pro-Yucca nuclear industry, at a time when the department was supposed to be acting as an independent manager of the proposed nuclear waste repository project. The firm strongly denied any conflict, but resigned when the charges became a distraction.

Since March 2000 New York-based LeBoeuf, Lamb, Greene & MacRae has pressed a lawsuit against the Energy Department to obtain the contract, alleging that it was most ideally suited for the job. Then last month the department signaled that it was going to avoid the traditional bidding process to hire a new firm, using a loophole in federal law that allows the department to conduct a private search when special circumstances warrant.

LeBoeuf interpreted that as a method for the department to quietly avoid hiring LeBoeuf, and it filed an injunction to prevent the department from hiring another firm.

But the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia on Wednesday denied the injunction, along with LeBoeuf's request that oral arguments begin before Sept. 16, when a hearing is scheduled, LeBoeuf attorney Mike McBride said today. The court ruling effectively paved the way for the department to hire a firm.

LeBoeuf plans to continue fighting to obtain the Yucca job and will ask the court to terminate any contract the department awards to another firm, McBride said.

Energy Department spokesman Joe Davis today said he didn't think the agency had a set deadline for hiring a new firm.

"But we are moving forward expeditiously," Davis wrote in an e-mail to the Sun.

The Energy Department needs a law firm to help it compile a complex application for a license to construct the waste repository at Yucca, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. The department is scrambling to meet a tight deadline of submitting the application by December 2004.