A Democratic congressional candidate running in a competitive swing state race was once excoriated in court as an environmental lawyer for overbilling the federal government for “imaginary” legal services, court records show.
Court records obtained by the Washington Examiner show Kirsten Engel, as a then-staff attorney for the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund, now known as Earthjustice, faced condemnation in 1993 from a panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit for the apparent overbilling of attorneys’ fees. Engel’s behavior, judges found, was a “serious transgression” and “aberration,” according to the written opinion.
While the records date back to 1993, news of them could undercut Engel’s touted message of stressing the importance of the rule of law as she prepares to face off against Rep. Juan Ciscomani (R-AZ) to represent Arizona’s 6th Congressional District. On the 2024 campaign trail, Engel declared in May, upon former President Donald Trump being found guilty of 34 felony counts in a hush money trial, that nobody “is above the law.”
Engel worked as an environmental attorney for the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund after a three-year stint in the Environmental Protection Agency’s office of general counsel from 1987 to 1990, according to a copy of Engel’s resume. During Engel’s time at the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund, the group coordinated on lawsuits against the federal government with the Environmental Defense Fund — including for a 1993 EPA case over a hazardous waste management regulation.
In that case, a three-judge panel that included Ruth Bader Ginsburg before her confirmation to the Supreme Court described being appalled at Engel’s “intolerably excessive” submissions for attorneys’ fees. Even a “perfunctory examination of Engel’s time entries would show that she billed on a Brobdingnagian scale,” the opinion read, adding that other Environmental Defense Fund lawyers “all submitted reasonable time sheets.”
“It appears that Engel’s flagrant overbilling was an aberration and that the EDF and its other outside attorneys have been conscientious in submitting their record keeping and fee request to this court,” the opinion read. “We regard overbilling the government as a serious transgression, damaging to the public fisc and violative of the trust reposed in each member of the bar.”
“There is simply no excuse,” the July 1993 opinion read, “for a private attorney billing the government for imaginary or unnecessary legal services. Therefore the petition for fees totaling $32,542.75 is granted to the extent of $14,069.25 and otherwise denied.”
In a statement to the Washington Examiner, Engel’s campaign manager, Alia Kapasi, said Engel “was a junior employee working for a notoriously tough and demanding boss on this case.”
“She completed her work as assigned by her supervisor and filed her time sheets accurately to her organization,” Kapasi said. “She played no role in the decision about what would be billed, and indeed the organization billed only a fraction of her total hours — all facts noted and established by the court. This opinion was written by an extreme, far-right judge aiming to embarrass the organization for which Kirsten worked for political purposes.”
In the 1993 opinion, there was an entire section titled “Time entries of Kirsten Engel.” It was filed by D.C. Circuit Court Judge Douglas H. Ginsburg, who was appointed by President Ronald Reagan.
The order slammed Engel for saying she spent over 72 hours, or “nearly two work weeks,” preparing two letters to the EPA about attorneys’ fees. Engel claimed she spent 37.5 hours researching the issue.
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“We do not understand why any attorney — much less one who, according to the EDF, has ‘extensive research practicing under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act,’ and was asked to teach at a major law school — would need almost a full week in order to research that issue,” the opinion read.
Meanwhile, after the debacle, the EDF asked the court to “delete all references” to Engel in its prior opinion. The court declined to do so, records show.
