The Louisiana attorneys who helped secure a landmark verdict requiring U.S. oil company Chevron to pay $744 million in environmental damages gave nearly $15,000 to the state judge who presided over the case, ethics filings reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon show. [some emphasis, links added]
The Baton Rouge-based law firm Talbot, Carmouche & Marcello and its lead partners gave $5,000 to Judge Michael Clement’s campaign across four separate payments made on March 24, 2014, according to the filings. Days earlier, four other firms involved in the case gave Clement another $3,500.
Those contributions were in addition to the $6,250 the firms wired to Clement in 2011 and 2012.
The 2014 contributions came during a judicial election in which Clement ran unopposed. It also came four months after the firms filed their landmark environmental lawsuit against more than a dozen other oil companies, including Chevron, in Clement’s judicial district.
The decade-long lawsuit argues the companies’ drilling activity dating back to the 1940s—when they produced oil to aid the U.S. military’s war effort—is responsible for the state’s coastal erosion. It eventually made its way before Clement, who oversaw the 2025 trial.
The revelation raises ethical questions about the firms’ involvement in the case and whether their payments were aimed at securing a friendlier trial.
Legal experts have criticized Clement’s handling of the trial, noting that he abruptly changed course on a judgment favoring oil companies in one instance; excluded evidence that defendants said was crucial to understanding why they didn’t pursue certain permits in the mid-1900s in another; and chastised defendants’ lawyers for questioning whether a jurist who was employed by the plaintiffs could fairly evaluate the evidence.
It also comes as the Supreme Court heard the case on Monday. The High Court is expected to rule on whether it belongs in state or federal court.
According to Carrie Severino, the president of the right-leaning Judicial Crisis Network, Monday’s oral arguments suggest the court is poised to rule for oil company defendants, which would mean the case and all related cases in Louisiana would have to be pursued in federal court.
Severino said the court’s three liberal justices, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson, clearly leaned in favor of Plaquemines Parish based on their questioning.
While the other justices were not as clear in their views of the case, their questioning suggested they leaned in favor of moving the case to federal court. Justice Sam Alito recused himself from the case over a financial stake in an involved oil company.
“The Supreme Court underscored the importance of this case in granting review and in the attention paid to the issues in today’s argument,” Chevron spokesman Bill Turenne said in a statement. “Chevron remains confident that a federal court is the proper forum for these cases and looks forward to the Court’s decision.”
If the court rules in favor of oil industry defendants, the state judgment would be tossed, and the plaintiff, Plaquemines Parish, a coastal jurisdiction that is home to roughly 23,500 Louisianians, would have to start over in federal court.
But if it rules in favor of Plaquemines, the case would remain in state court, and Chevron would be forced to pay the $744 million judgment, a share of which would be awarded to the law firms that spearheaded the case.
According to the legal services contract the firms entered into with Plaquemines Parish, which was reviewed by the Free Beacon, the exact amount the lawyers representing the parish will reap from the judgment would ultimately be decided by the state court, meaning Clement could have a direct say in how much the firms, his donors, are paid.
“The whole thing is set up as a kangaroo court. The whole structure of this was set up to, basically, pander to the interests of these plaintiff’s lawyers,” former U.S. attorney general William Barr told the Free Beacon in an interview. “You have all these different cases with these guys getting big payouts if they can force a settlement.”
“The dogs are being let loose on these companies for political reasons,” Barr added.
Read rest at Free Beacon
