Managing Partner Eric Garner Named Environmental Law MVP

For Immediate Release: Dec. 17, 2019
Media Contact: Denise Nix • (213) 787-2552 • denise.nix@bbklaw.com

LOS ANGELES —  Congratulations to Best Best & Krieger LLP Managing Partner Eric Garner, who was named one of Law360’s 2019 Environmental MVPs. The annual recognition is given to the attorneys “who have distinguished themselves from their peers,” according to the national legal publication. Garner was one of four attorneys in the U.S. selected for this highly competitive honor.
 
Law360 looks back at the individual attorney’s accomplishments during the year in selecting the MVPs. In a profile published Dec. 9, the publication noted Garner’s recent work representing Calleguas Municipal Water District in a groundwater dispute in the Las Posas Groundwater Basin. This is one of the first lawsuits in the wake of the 2014 passage of the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act. “What we are doing right now is we are shaping the process by which California's groundwater is going to be managed under this new law,” Garner said in an interview.
 
Garner was asked about major challenges he faced this year, and he discussed the complicated work preparing for the appeal of a trial court judgment in the largest and most complex groundwater pumping rights case ever in California, and perhaps in U.S. history. Representing the County of Los Angeles Waterworks District No. 40, the matter involves adjudication of the Antelope Valley Groundwater Basin. “The primary issue in this case, which is hugely important for California and the future, is ... when you own land in California over a groundwater basin, the common law gives you a right to pump water from the basin and use it on your land,” Garner said. “That right, under the common law, is the same whether you've been doing that for 100 years or whether you want to start doing that tomorrow.”
 
Law360 also noted Garner’s significant achievement of writing and publishing the third edition of “California Water.” It noted how he’s used “his decades of experience in the sector to help clients navigate long-running and complex water rights disputes in the State.”
 
Garner said he was drawn to water law because of its complexities, based on policy, history and the demand for the precious resource. “It is more important than ever. The resource is more stressed than ever. It is not a problem we are going to solve in my career — or my lifetime. But trying to make a contribution to some long-term solutions is too challenging to pass up.”
 
Read the entire article in Law360 by clicking here.

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Best Best & Krieger LLP is a national law firm that focuses on environmental, business, education, municipal and telecommunications law for public agency and private clients. With more than 200 attorneys, the law firm has 10 offices nationwide, including Los Angeles, Sacramento, San Diego and Washington, D.C. For more information, visit www.bbklaw.com or follow @BBKlaw on Twitter or @BestBestKrieger on Facebook.