Jess represents public and private clients across the country in environmental, energy, and natural resource matters. She chairs Marten Law LLP’s litigation practice, and has taken myriad cases to successful judgments for local government and private clients over the past 20 years. These include multi-million dollar cost recovery actions, pursued to ensure polluters rather than ratepayers pay the costs necessary to clean up drinking water sources contaminated by military and industrial operations. Jess has represented renewable energy developers in ESA, MMPA, APA, and NEPA challenges, and ensured regulatory compliance of developments, water diversion operations, fishing, and other natural resource-dependent activities with federal and state laws.
Outside the courtroom, Jess negotiates settlements in complex multi-party cases and advises clients on regulatory compliance, environmental liabilities in property transactions, and in permitting matters. She is lead counsel for multiple municipalities in the Aqueous Film-Forming Foam Multi-District Litigation in South Carolina federal district court, involving PFAS, as well as in cost recovery and water quality cases involving a range of hazardous substances nationwide.
- Represents multiple cities and water districts in actions against U.S. Department of Defense (“DOD”) and chemical manufacturers for contamination of public water systems by perfluorinated compounds (“PFAS”), including in the Aqueous Film-Forming Foams Products Liability Multi-District Litigation in the U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina.
- Represents New Mexico local governments for recovery of costs to remediate municipal water supplies contaminated by private companies and the U.S. military. Successfully negotiated multi-year, multi-million dollar consent decree to remediate public water supply with DOD and EPA.
- Represents Seattle Times in environmental cost recovery litigation in U.S. District Court for the W.D. Washington and the Ninth Circuit, and in insurance coverage litigation.
- Represents partnerships between affordable housing and community advocacy groups and development companies to bring long-term affordable housing to increasingly gentrified urban areas in the Pacific Northwest.
- Advises global apparel, food, and outdoor gear retailers, manufacturers, and distributors on PFAS regulatory compliance.
- Represented fishing companies in support of and challenges to NOAA Fisheries allocations, fishery management regulations, and associated ESA and NEPA decisions for Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands Pacific Cod and Atka mackerel fisheries.
- Best Lawyers in America®: Environmental Law, Environmental Litigation, and Natural Resources (2018-present)
- Business Today's Top 10 Influential Environmental Lawyers in Washington, 2023
- Environmental Law Institute Leadership Counsel and GreenTech Committee (2020-present)
- Chambers USA: Washington – Environment (2022-present)
- Lawdragon 500 Leading Environmental & Energy Lawyers (2021-present)
- Pro Bono work representing refugees seeking political asylum (2007-19)
- WSBA Board of Governors Pro Bono Publico Service Recognition (2007-17, 2019-present)
- “Super Lawyer” (2021-present) and Rising Star® (2015-21), Washington Law & Politics / Super Lawyers Magazine
- Editorial Board, WSBA Environmental & Land Use Law Section (2006-present)
- Guest, "Law, disrupted" hosted by John Quinn, Forever Chemicals - Forever Litigation? (June 22, 2023)
- Speaker, Lewis and Clark Law School Environmental, Natural Resources, and Energy Law 2023 Symposium, The Next Five Decades: Conserving Biodiversity on a Changing Planet (April 7, 2023)
- Speaker, Vertex Webinar, PFAS Compounds: Implications for Real Estate Transactions (March 21, 2023)
- Co-author, "Firefighting and Forever Chemicals: The Environmental Impact of PFAS in Firefighting Foam," with A. Dunn, ABA Natural Resources & Environment Vol. 37, No. 2 (Fall 2022)
- Speaker, Masters of Mass Tort 2022, "Government Entities as Allies in Toxic Torts" (September 13, 2022)
- Speaker, Perrin Conferences, Impact of PFAS on Environmental Litigation (January 13, 2022)
- J.D., with honors and Environmental and Natural Resources Law Certificate, Lewis and Clark Law School (2005)
- B.A., with honors, Cornell University, History (1998)
- Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals
- U.S. District Courts, Eastern and Western Districts of Washington
- State Bar of Washington
