“So Much of the Dimock Story Was One Big Hustle by Trial Lawyers, Special Interests, Politicians and Actors”, By THOMAS SHEPSTONE
“Multiple lawyers who looked upon Dimock as a lawsuit rainmaker have left with the area with their reputations shattered and their own butts in the courthouse hot seats.”
So Much of the Dimock Story Was One Big Hustle by Trial Lawyers, Special Interests, Politicians and Actors
DEC 11, 2024
Several months ago, I posted an update on the Lisa Johnson tragedy, one of the outfalls of the Dimock hustle by those engaged in lawfare.
Here is some of what I said at the time:
The Dimock story is one long saga involving lawfare from beginning to end. Multiple lawyers who looked upon Dimock as a lawsuit rainmaker have left with the area with their reputations shattered and their own butts in the courthouse hot seats. I've written about many of these legal fails over the years, but some of the most interesting cases have involved an attorney named Lisa Johnson, a former cop, who represented [Pennsylvania State] Senator Katie Muth, of all people, and some others. I wrote about the Muth case and Johnson's involvement in it here and here, if you're interested.
I then relayed some of the bizarre things Johnson had done and the legal consequences for her, followed by my own questions and observations:
So, there it is; another lawyer drawn into the Dimock lawfare debacle and suffering greatly for it. The sad part is that Lisa Johnson was pulled into this matter and others by folks such as Senator Katie Muth and we truly have no idea why. Did they pick her because she was vulnerable and would create noise? And, who financed this pitiful venture? Those are the real questions and once you ask them you immediately know some outside parties were up their ears in dirty work in an attempt to slander the oil and gas industry. They used local people, they used troubled lawyers and they used the press to advance a false narrative for their own purposes. Sad, sad, sad.
The background is that Attorney Johnson had represented some landowners in their appeal of a Department of Environmental Protection finding that water quality issues on their property were not related to nearby oil and gas operations conducted by Coterra Energy. Following extensive litigation before the Board, it entered a sanctions order in the form of legal fees. The Board concluded such sanctions were warranted based on Attorney Johnson’s previous filing of a motion to stay, which it found was not filed in good faith, but rather to cause unnecessary delay and increase in the cost of litigation.
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Since then, the calamity has only gotten worse for Johnson and the landowners she represented, as a couple of Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court cases have affirmed sanctions placed on Attorney Johnson by the Pennsylvania Environmental Hearing Board. Their opinions may be found here and here and are full of legalisms of little interest to most readers but are, nonetheless, of great importance. Both address the legality of the following sanctions placed on Johnson and the landowners by the Board:
It is hereby ordered that Coterra’s motion or sanctions in the form of legal fees is granted. Lisa Johnson, Esquire, Lisa Johnson & Associates, and [Landowners] are jointly and severally liable for reimbursing Coterra $18,614.70 for the reasonable fees it incurred in responding to [Landowners’] February 3, 2022 motion to stay proceedings.
The Commonwealth Court has now affirmed these sanctions, saying the following (emphasis added):
Lisa Johnson, Esq. (Attorney Johnson) petitions for review of the Environmental Hearing Board’s (Board) June 7, 2022 Order granting CoterranEnergy, Inc.’s (Coterra) Motion for Sanctions in the Form of Legal Fees (Sanctionsn Order). The Sanctions Order held Attorney Johnson, her law firm, Lisa Johnson & Associates, and her clients, Tonya Stanley, Bonnie Dibble, and Jeffrey Dibble (collectively, Landowners) jointly and severally liable for reimbursing Coterra $18,614.70 in legal fees and costs. The Board has never before imposed sanctions on a party’s attorney. In this context, although unprecedented, there is more than enough evidence that the egregious conduct by Attorney Johnson established her “bad faith, harassment, unwarranted delaying tactics, and outright lying to the Board and opposing counsel, not to mention highly disrespectful, unprofessional conduct in general” such that the Board properly imposed sanctions pursuant to its regulations. Reproduced Record (R.R.) at 249a. Thus, for the reasons articulated below, we affirm.
The significance of the ruling is not in the amount of sanctions, but in what it says about the parties suing Coterra Energy, who, we are told, engaged in harassment, delaying tactics, outright lying and in disrespectful, unprofessional conduct. Will this decision now be appealed to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court? Perhaps, but it's hard to imagine any different conclusion after two courts have already ruled so definitively.
What these decisions show us is that so much of the Dimock story was one big hustle on the part of some trial lawyers, special interest groups, politicians and actors, all of whom tried to milk it for money, publicity and power. Lisa Johnson and the landowners she represented were the smallest fry and got burned as they were used and egged on by others who are mentioned nowhere in the decisions and will pay no penalty. That’s the nature of lawfare, of course. Coterra Energy wisely fought back and got some well-deserved justice, but the unmentioned parties who incited this travesty from behind the scenes are going scot-free.