Law Offices of Matthew F. Pawa, P.C.

team photoThe Law Offices of Matthew F. Pawa, P.C. provides high quality legal services in major environmental cases, general commercial litigation and other legal matters involving consumer rights, unfair business practices, consitutional rights, and personal injuries. The firm offers significant experience representing governments, environmental and conservation groups, citizens, property owners, small businesses, non-profit organizations and injured persons. We are particularly known for our work on global warming litigation. We handle both class actions and individual cases. Collaboration with other firms across the nation is a common element of our practice. We work on contingency, hourly and mixed fee arrangements and are open to creative billing arrangements that benefit the client and reward us for success. We handle every case with an eye toward taking it to trial and welcome the opportunity for trial. Our attorneys have backgrounds in both the plaintiff and defense bars and in litigation and land use law. We welcome difficult, challenging, complex, and novel cases.

Breaking News:

June 16, 2009:  The Pawa Firm today argued an appeal in the New Hampshire Supreme Court in the MTBE case.  The appeal addresses whether two oil companies that are alleged to have added MTBE to gasoline were properly brought into the case at a time when the case was pending in federal court.  The case has since been returned to state court and the two new defendants claim the federal actions bringing them into the case should be given no credence in state court. 

  • To see Matt Pawa’s oral argument in this appeal, click here.
Luke Cole and Matt Pawa

June 8, 2009:  The Law Offices of Matthew F. Pawa, P.C. honors the memory of Luke Cole, who died in a tragic accident last week.  Cole was the President of the Center on Race Poverty and the Environment and a leader in our global warming case on behalf of Kivalina.  

The Pawa Firm attorneys and staff were privileged to have known and worked with Luke and to have become his friends.  Luke was not only a great legal mind but a generous and kind spirit.  We look forward to participating in memorials to Luke and in carrying on his important work.  We offer our deepest condolences to his family.  We urge all those wishing to honor his work to make a contribution to CRPE.

May 19, 2009:  The Pawa Firm is pleased to announce a major victory in the clean car cases (“Pavley cases”).  General Motors, Chrysler and their trade associations have given up the fight against state greenhouse gas laws.  Under a settlement announced today, the automakers will comply with new federal standards that are at least as stringent as the state laws they have been fighting against for years.  They agreed to stay their lawsuits and, upon issuance of the new federal rules, dismiss them. 

  • To read details of the settlement agreement, click here.
  • For further information on these cases on the Pawa Firm’s role, click here.

January 27, 2009: There they go again! The U.S. automobile industry and its apologists are claiming, once again, that it will go out of business if it is required to comply with California's greenhouse gas law. Today's New York Times reports David E. Cole, chairman of the Michigan-based Center for Automotive Research -- whose clients include automobile manufacturers and their trade associations -- as stating that the California regulations, if enacted today, “would basically kill the industry.” Cole added that “it would have a devastating effect on everybody, and not just the domestics.” Click here to read article. Detroit has been playing this "sky is falling" game for decades and it is not only false but in fact has led the American automobile industry to ruin. Is this the same David Cole who is the son of former GM President Edward Cole? See Michael Weisskopf, Auto-Pollution Debate Has Ring of the Past, Despite Success, Detroit Resists, Washington Post, March 26, 1990. Edward Cole led GM during its battle against catalytic converters in the early 1970s. Consider this history in which GM, Chrysler and Ford have filed lawsuits and predicated economic catastrophe from each major pollution control program, only to later find they were wrong.

January 10, 2009:  The Pawa Firm is pleased to announce that Matt Pawa will be serving as a panelist at four legal symposia in coming months:  the American Bar Association's Section of Environment, Energy and Resources Annual Conference on Environmental Law March 12-16, 2009 in Keystone, Colorado; the Hofstra Law School symposium on Energy and the Environment: Empowering Consumers March 19-20, 2009; the American Law Institute-American Bar Association's annual Global Warming and the Law Course in Washington, D.C. April 2-3, 2009; and the Environmental Law Institute-University of California, Berkeley's conference Environmental Protection in the Balance: Citizens, Courts, and the Constitution, April 16-17, 2009, in Washington, D.C.

Richard Busa's helmet

us flagJanuary 5, 2009: The Pawa Firm today earned a victory on behalf of Newton Firefighter Richard Busa.  The Newton, Massachusetts Fire Department has prohibited Busa from wearing his fire helmet that he painted as an American flag even though it allows other decorations on fire helmets.  On Friday January 2, 2009, the Fire Department ordered Busa to return the helmet to the city even though Busa had obtained, at no expense to the city, a new helmet that meets with department approval.  The Pawa Firm, representing Busa pro bono, interceded on Friday by seeking a written statement of the reasoning behind the order to return the painted helmet.  Today, the City of Newton backed down and has allowed Busa to keep the flag helmet.

To read articles regarding Richard Busa's patriotic helmet:

To see a photo of Richard Busa and Matt Pawa with the helmet, click here.

December 18, 2008:  The Pawa Firm is pleased to announce that attorney Matt Pawa will be giving the keynote speech at the annual Public Interest Environmental Law Conference at the University of Oregon School of Law in February, 2009.  This annual gathering of hundreds of environmental lawyers is frequently billed as the "world's most important environmental law conference."  Mr. Pawa is honored to be attending and providing the keynote. 

November 25, 2008: Today a federal district court in Rhode Island has dismissed all the claims filed by General Motors Corp, Chrysler Corp. LLC, the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, and the Association of International Automobile Manufacturers against the state of Rhode Island. GM, Chrysler, AAM and AIAM filed suit seeking to strike down Rhode Island's greenhouse gas law. The Pawa firm represents three environmental groups (Sierra Club, NRDC, Environmental Defense) that intervened in the case to help the state defend its global warming law. The court ruled today that GM, Chrysler, AAM and AIAM already have had their day in court in identical cases that they filed and lost in California and Vermont. The Court therefore dismissed all of their legal claims. The court has allowed local Rhode Island automobile dealerships, who also filed suit but did not participate in the Vermont and California cases, to soldier on alone with their claims for now. The court's opinion, however, leaves open the issue of whether further evidence might show that the dealerships' claims also should be barred by the Vermont and California judgments. And the court's opinion invites further briefing on whether the dealerships claims might be too "derivative" of those of the the real parties in interest, i.e., the manufacturers, and thus should be dismissed in any event.

To see news items regarding the Rhode Island federal court's decision:

October 10, 2008:  The Pawa firm today announced the filing of a class action lawsuit against the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority seeking refunds for E-ZPass users who were denied discounts at Boston area toll plazas.  The lawsuit alleges that MTA discriminates against interstate commerce by granting discounts only to users of MTA's own FAST LANE electronic toll collection system while denying those discounts to users of the out-of-state system know as E-ZPass.  E-ZPass is the electronic toll collection system of New York as well as Delaware, Maine, Maryland, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and West Virginia.  The four toll plazas at issue in the lawsuit are located at Route 128, Allston-Brighton, the Ted Williams Tunnel and the Sumner Tunnel.  These are the only toll plazas at issue in the lawsuit.  For more information about the lawsuit:

September 18, 2008: Kivalina today filed its legal brief in opposition to the defendants' motions to dismiss. The oil, coal and electric utility defendants have asked the court to dismiss this global warming case. Kivalina today answered those arguments with a 140 page brief demonstrating that its case is proper and must be allowed to move forward.

July 28, 2008: The Pawa law firm and the Global Warming Legal Action Project have scored a major victory in the Cape Wind case. Today the Energy Facilities Siting Board ("EFSB") rejected nearly all of the arguments by the opponents of Cape Wind to dismiss the EFSB case filed by Cape Wind. The Pawa firm represents citizens group Clean Power Now in the case. Cape Wind filed the case seeking a certificate of environmental compliance after the Cape Cod Commission had denied Cape Wind a permit for its electric transmission line. The EFSB ruled today, in favor of Clean Power Now and Cape Wind, that (1) the Cape Cod Commission's procedural denial of the permit was in fact a denial; (2) the Commission's denial was a final decision and therefore reviewable by the EFSB; (3) that it would not remand the case to the Commission given the extensive evidence already submitted on the Cape Wind project; (4) that the EFSB case would be limited to the transmission line, which crosses state waters - and would not address any impacts of the wind farm itself, which lies beyond state jurisdiction in federal waters; and (5) that its review of the Commission's decision would not be limited to the record developed by the Commission.

The case is now scheduled for hearings in October and is expected to be concluded this fall.

Feb. 26, 2008: The Pawa firm has today filed a new case on global warming. The Native Village of Kivalina and the City of Kivalina filed suit against oil and electric power companies and a coal company seeking moneatary damages. This impoverished Arctic village of Inupiat Eskimos must be relocated due to the ravages of global warming, which has melted the sea ice that formerly protected this village from coastal storms. The Army Corps of Engineers and the US GAO have issued reports chronicling Kivalina's global warming harms and estimating the cost to move the village at $400 million or more.

California federal court rules for State of California and environmental groups in case by automobile industry seeking to strike down state greenhouse gas law.

Representative Clients: