San Francisco, CA commercial litigation attorney Edward Hugo talks about his most memorable environmental law case. He notes that Hugo Parker specializes in defending environmental litigation. One of the most memorable cases he tried was the Modesto Case, a matter that has taken on a life of its own. Initially filed in 1998, the case remains active more than 20 years later and has been phased into separate trials addressing different portions of the city.

In two of these trials, his firm represented a distributor of perchloroethylene, a dry-cleaning solvent. Other defendants included manufacturers and the dry cleaners themselves. In both trials, his client was the only distributor to be acquitted by the jury—found not liable to the city—while all of the manufacturers were held liable. Over the course of the litigation, juries have awarded hundreds of millions of dollars in damages, highlighting the significance of his client’s favorable outcomes.