Eric Weslander

Mr. Weslander represents clients in connection with environmental remediations nationwide. He uses investigative skills acquired during eight years working as a journalist to develop factual histories of contaminated industrial sites and identify potentially responsible parties. His experience includes helping obtain dismissal of a third-party complaint in connection with a major Superfund site in Illinois; providing guidance to clients on regulation of toxic and hazardous substances including PCBs; assisting with sensitive real-estate transactions; helping develop a database and allocation model for a Superfund site in California; and analyzing successor liability and corporate veil-piercing issues under CERCLA, the Superfund law.

Before joining Lathrop & Gage, Mr. Weslander completed a legal clerkship for the Honorable John W. Lungstrum in the U.S. District Court for the District of Kansas.

Prior to attending law school, Mr. Weslander worked as a journalist in Louisville, Ky., Tucson, and Lawrence, Kansas and completed a reporting internship at the Kansas City Star. He covered topics including legal affairs, U.S. Congressional campaigns, and the finances of two major research universities. He was named the top beat writer in Arizona in 2001 by the Arizona Press Club and won the Kansas Press Association’s Award of Excellence while working at the Lawrence Journal-World, a publication labeled “The Newspaper of the Future” by The New York Times for its innovative multimedia approach to journalism. He regularly sought access to public records under the Freedom of Information Act and state open-records laws and remains involved in media-law affairs as a member of the committee that plans the nationwide “Media and the Law” conference each year in Kansas City.

Court Memberships

• Kansas
• Missouri
• U.S. District Court for the District of Kansas

Honors

• Shamberg Scholarship
• Cossman Freshman Scholarship Award and Romano-Drill Scholarship
• Kansas Press Association Award of Excellence
• Hearst Foundation National Spot-News Writing Competition – First place, 1998
• Hearst Foundation National Print Championship Competition – Second place, 1998

Professional Affiliations

• American Bar Association Section of Environment, Energy and Resources Law
• Kansas City Metropolitan Bar Association, Environmental Law Committee
• “Media and the Law” Seminar Planning Committee
• Comments Editor, Washburn Law Journal, Vol. 49

Publications

• Murky “Development”: How the Ninth Circuit Exposed Ambiguity Within the Communications Decency Act, and Why Internet Publishers Should Worry [Fair Housing Council of San Fernando Valley v. Roommates.com, LLC, 521 F.3d 1157 (9th Cir. 2008)], 48 Washburn L.J. 267 (2008) (cited in Harvard Law Review and the American Business Law Journal)