A Tulsa federal judge has ruled an Oklahoma City law firm has a conflict of interest and cannot represent the Bristow First Assembly of God in its lawsuit over a Superfund site that forced the church to move four years ago.
U.S. District Judge Terence C. Kern issued the ruling on a motion filed by Kinder Morgan Inc., one of the defendants named in the 2015 lawsuit. Kinder Morgan contended an attorney for Durbin, Larimore and Bialick of Oklahoma City had once represented El Paso Corporation which has been a wholly-owned subsidiary of Kinder Morgan since 2012.
The suit was filed against Marathon Oil Corporation, Marathon Petroleum Corporation and Kinder Morgan, blaming them for the pollution and environmental concerns from the former Wilcox refinery that ended operations 80 years at the site where the church was eventually located.
Kinder Morgan filed the motion against the Oklahoma City law firm stating that El Paso Corporation first learned of the Superfund site in 2011 when it received a letter from the Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality . El Paso had hired the Oklahoma City attorney at the time to represent it in meetings with ODEQ.
The judge ruled the Oklahoma City law firm is “disqualified from serving as counsel for Plaintiffs.”
The lawsuit was filed after the church pastor, Mark S. Evans, his wife and their two children were forced to move from the property after the Department of Environmental Quality warned them that living at the site “could jeopardize their health and safety.”