yourself, and you look at the documents
yourself, and you learn the geology, the
hydrogeology, and you learn the chemistry,
you’re going to be ahead of the lawyer on
the other side—because he or she will have
had a bunch of younger lawyers doing that
background work. That has served me well over
the years.”
So well, in fact, that after a decade of
hazardous waste cases, Rathbun was tapped
to serve as a U.S. attorney in 1993. “[U.S. Rep.]
Dan Glickman knew I could try a case,” he
says. Rathbun suspects, too, that his work for
Bill Clinton during Clinton’s presidential run
highlighted his name. “My parents always wanted
to know where I went wrong, because they were
Republicans,” he quips.
As U.S. attorney, he was involved in the
Oklahoma City bombing case in 1995. “Within
a couple of days [of the bombing], I got a call
from the AG’s office on a Friday night saying it
looks like there’s a Kansas connection to this,
and we’re going to need you to do a search
warrant tonight,” Rathbun says. “So I went over
to Herington, Kansas, and the FBI were in the
process of interviewing [Terry] Nichols, and we
got the information we needed to get a search
warrant. We called a judge early Saturday
morning, went down to chambers, and got a
search warrant. I just kept thinking, ‘Man, you
better not screw this up because this is going to
be one of the nation’s most horrendous crimes. …
You better get this right.’”
Rathbun handled portions of the case
involving the search of Nichols’ residence and
the effort to send him back to Oklahoma. “I have
the best law firm,” Rathbun says of what’s now
Depew Gillen Rathbun & McInteer. “They’re like
brothers and sisters to me. But that was the best
job that I ever had.”
Until his time as a U.S. attorney, Rathbun’s
practice was 100 percent devoted to
contaminated groundwater. But he’s had to
evolve. “There’s actually not much of that practice
left anymore,” Rathbun says. “Companies that
used to dump contaminants into the ground
are more responsible now. So it’s good for the
environment. Not so good for Randy Rathbun.”
Unfortunately, there are plenty of other ways in
which the land can be abused.
In July 2007, a flood inundated Coffeyville,
Kan. Officials at the Coffeyville refinery decided
that to keep their crude oil tank from floating,
they should pump it full of additional oil. But
workers neglected to turn off the line after the
tank had filled, Rathbun says. By 6: 30 the next
morning, 90,000 gallons of oil had coated
the surrounding landscape, wiping out most
of the east end of the town. “The refinery tried
to portray this as [being caused by] an act of
God,” contends Rathbun, who is representing
businesses and farmers affected. “What it
actually was, was that they let a tank run over—
and it hadn’t been the first time a tank ran over
at that refinery. And when a tank runs over in
the middle of a flood, it causes catastrophic
problems. There was oil clear down 20 miles
into Oklahoma.”
Eighteen of the 20 cases that Rathbun filed
have settled. At press time, he was awaiting trial
for the remaining two. “The sad thing about it
is if they had had any kind of emergency plan, it
would have never happened,” he says.
