Kevin Cassidy ’02 Opens PEAC East Coast Office

In January, Kevin Cassidy ’02 opened the Pacific Environmental Advocacy Center’s East Coast office in Massachusetts to better position the clinic to participate in environmental litigation of national scope and significance.

Cassidy, who received his BAfrom the University of Connecticut, was a senior trial attorney in the Environ-mental Crimes Section of the U.S. Department of Justice prior to joining PEAC.

In his eight years as an environmental crimes prosecutor, he was colead counsel for several significant prosecutions, including the 2007 trial of the Southern Union Company in Rhode Island for Resource Conservation and Recovery Act violations involving the storage of mercury waste.

The Southern Union case resulted in an $18 million criminal penalty, the largest nonnegotiated criminal penalty in environmental crimes history.

In 2010, Cassidy was colead counsel for United States v. OceanPro Industries, et al., a wildlife crimes case involving illegal striped bass fishing in the Potomac River in Maryland.

The five-week jury trial was the culmination of a series of cases that collectively resulted in convictions for 22 defendants and fines and restitution totaling $1,361,000.

For his work as cocounsel on United States v.McWane, et al., a Clean Water Act trial in Birmingham, Alabama, Cassidy received the DOJ’s John Marshall Award and the Silver Medal from the Environmental Protection Agency.