AmLaw Litigation Daily selected Principal Jimmy Slaughter (Washington, DC) as a runner-up for "Litigator of the Week" for March 1, 2019. AmLaw Litigation Daily chose Jimmy based on a pair of victories in one week for Chiquita Canyon Landfill (a subsidiary of firm client Waste Connections) in Los Angeles, California.

On February 20, 2019, Jimmy and a team of Beveridge & Diamond litigators, following a trial in September 2018, secured a decision vacating a $5.1 million Enforcement Order for fees and penalties against Chiquita Canyon Landfill. The Hearing Officer’s ruling vacated a 2017 Enforcement Order issued by the Los Angeles County Department of Public Works (DPW) regarding fees for solid waste disposal allegedly owed by Chiquita Canyon. The decision establishes important principles regarding a landfill’s right to maximize use of recycled materials for maintenance, cover, and other beneficial reuse at a landfill. Associate Megan Morgan (Baltimore) co-tried the case for Chiquita with Jimmy, which has been covered by industry trade press including Waste360 and Waste Dive.

Five days later on February 25, Jimmy and colleagues secured a unanimous panel decision in the California Court of Appeal in an interlocutory appeal in Chiquita Canyon’s litigation against Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors over the Landfill’s 2017 conditional use permit. The decision, reported at 2019 WL 911669, held that Chiquita Canyon had pled equitable estoppel in its Complaint against the County and that the trial court erred in dismissing that portion of the Complaint. The Court wrote that “[t]he estoppel arises because [Los Angeles] County led Chiquita to believe that it would not forfeit its ability to bring a legal challenge when the County later argued precisely such a forfeiture." Associate Jake Duginski (San Francisco) was second chair on the appeal.

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