Brad Marten and Billy Plauché tackle
the Gulf oil crisis—from Seattle
BY GEOV PARRISH
PHOTOGRAPHY BY RICK DAHMS
BRADLEY M. MARTEN
As a horrified world watched last year, a
sea-bottom gusher poured an estimated
206 million gallons of crude oil into the
Gulf of Mexico. The April 20, 2010 explosion
at the Deepwater Horizon offshore-oil rig—
which killed 11 workers—caused the largest
marine spill in U.S. history, devastating
marine life and fisheries, shoreline
ecosystems and economies.
A year later, two of the primary lawyers
helping the state of Louisiana litigate the
spill were working away in offices five blocks
from each other—not in New Orleans or
Dallas, but in distant Seattle. How did they
come to be fighting to restore the Gulf of
Mexico from 2,000 miles away?
· FOUNDER, MARTEN LAW
· ENVIRONMENTAL
· WASHINGTON SUPER LAWYERS:
2003–2011; TOP 100: 2006–2010
SAMUEL W. “BILLY” PLAUCHÉ IV
· CO-FOUNDER, PLAUCHÉ & STOCK
· ENVIRONMENTAL, LAND USE
· WASHINGTON SUPER LAWYERS:
2003–2011
ON THE TOP FLOOR OF A DOWNTOWN
Seattle skyscraper, Brad Marten’s office
overlooks a body of water that has seen a
lot of pollution in its day. But Elliott Bay’s
past problems pale next to those of another
body of water over which Marten spent years
litigating: Prince William Sound in Alaska.
The affable 58-year-old founder of Marten
Law was born in New York but grew up in
Southern California. He went East for school,
earning his law degree at Harvard, then
came to the Pacific Northwest in 1981 to
clerk for U.S. District Court Judge Donald S.
Voorhees. Marten liked Seattle and decided
to stay put. He selected his first firm among
several attractive offers because Preston
Gates & Ellis (now K&L Gates) also needed
a drummer in its house rock band. Among
other distinguished alumni, the band’s
bassist, Dan Satterberg, went on to become
King County’s prosecuting attorney.
From an inauspicious beginning—his
first assignments were in the foreclosure
department—Marten became an
early pioneer in the embryonic field of
environmental law. “It was clear that it was
going to be an emerging area,” Marten says.
“Most environmental laws were passed in
the ’70s; they were all new laws. There was
no field. We had to sort of invent it.”
Over the next decade, Marten became
chair of the firm’s environmental and land use
group—and represented Alaska in its three
years of litigation against Exxon over damage
to natural resources and recovery of state
costs surrounding the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil
spill. Alaska settled with Exxon for $1 billion.
