" The new legal threat to environmental attorneys: Sanctions from judges and attorneys general ", 5 Feb 2018

Oil and gas companies are moving beyond simply filing lawsuits against municipalities that pass ordinances banning drilling and other types of industrial activity. In recent months, the energy industry, along with a state attorney general, has started going after the lawyers who are using novel legal arguments to protect small towns and the environment.

...In January, a federal judge ordered Linzey, co-founder of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF), to pay a portion of the legal fees incurred by a company that had proposed a fracking waste injection well in a small town that Linzey and his team were suing. 

... Human rights lawyer Steven Donziger helped secure a landmark victory in 2011 when an Ecuadorian judge ordered Chevron to pay $9 billion in compensation for environmental contamination in the country. But a federal judge found that multiple court rulings in Ecuador against Chevron were the product of “egregious fraud.”

 ... Colorado’s attorney general last year ordered a lawyer who had filed a lawsuit to protect the Colorado River to voluntarily withdraw the complaint or face major sanctions.

...The sanctions movement against environmental attorneys is occurring at the same time that companies are filing seemingly frivolous lawsuits of their own against groups for protesting infrastructure projects...