March 12, 2025

Howard A. Learner

Remembering Brady Williamson, ELPC Board Member and Litigation Approval Committee Chair

"Brady was unassuming and just brilliant. He had the most eclectic and remarkable law practice of anyone I know. He was a very good friend and great strategy partner.”

Brady was unassuming and just brilliant. As an attorney, political strategist and remarkable man of many talents. I greatly valued our personal friendship and Brady’s many contributions to ELPC’s success.

Many of you know how much I deeply respected Brady’s professional acumen and greatly admired him as a person. He was a very good friend and strategy partner for me on many things ELPC.  Getting to know Brady through ELPC over the years was a joy on a personal level, and truly fascinating and interesting because of his rare mix of legal, policy, political and common sense.  I enjoyed working with Brady as he chaired ELPC Litigation Approval Committee and on the many ELPC litigation and advocacy strategy issues on which I’d call Brady and ask him: “What do you think we should do about….?”

Brady had the most eclectic and remarkable law practice of anyone I know.

First, Brady was a First Amendment legal expert who represented news media including the Capital Times (Madison), Journal Sentinel (Milwaukee), The Progressive and The Onion (yes, really!). The Capital Times’ obit aptly calls Brady “a legal giant defending free speech.”  Well worth reading.

Second, Brady was also a top-tier, leading national bankruptcy attorney who chaired President Clinton’s National Bankruptcy Reform Commission.

Third, Brady was also a close political adviser to U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and many other leading national and Wisconsin political and policy leaders.  He began his career as Press Secretary to then-Congressman Abner Mikva. Brady was a masterful Democratic political strategist and debate coach for several Presidential candidates.

Brady & the ELPC Board with Senator Warren at an ELPC Luncheon, April 2018

A “Brady story” that combines so much of the above. In April 2016, Peabody Energy, the world’s largest privately-owned coal company, filed for bankruptcy in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in St. Louis, its headquarters city. Peabody had been engaging in the risky practice of “self-bonding” for its coal mine reclamation and land restoration responsibilities.  Peabody was $1.3 billion short for cleaning up its mine sites in Illinois, Indiana, New Mexico and Wyoming.  Peabody’s first proposed reorganization plan would evade those legal responsibilities and unfairly transfer the mine reclamation and cleanup costs onto the public.

Brady raised the novel and precedent-setting idea of ELPC intervening in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court case.  ELPC contended that a “feasible” reorganization plan for Peabody to emerge from bankruptcy should not include continued self-bonding of mine reclamation costs. In other words, Peabody should pay up and buy surety bonds to cover the environmental cleanup costs as a public interest condition of any court approval of its proposed reorganization.

ELPC was breaking new legal ground here. Noting that my ELPC co-counsel and I knew next to nothing about bankruptcy law. Brady did! He quarterbacked our litigation strategy.

So, ELPC moved to intervene in the bankruptcy case, and the federal judge ruled in our favor, granting ELPC status as a “party in interest” over Peabody’s strenuous objections.

As we said publicly:

“Mine reclamation laws were put in place almost 40 years ago to help protect the public and ensure that mining companies like Peabody fulfill their environmental responsibilities. Peabody should be required to live up to its mine reclamation responsibilities and assure that it will not saddle taxpayers with these costs.”

“The bankruptcy process requires a full, practical and open discussion of a company’s plan for reorganization. That is particularly necessary where public rights and corporate responsibilities are involved as they are here with Peabody.”

Many briefs and oral arguments later – combined with, in retrospect, a pretty bizarre meeting with Peabody’s CEO and General Counsel at the Peabody Plaza office building in St. Louis – ELPC won.  We successfully intervened before the U.S. Bankruptcy Court, gained precedential rulings, and forced Peabody to buy surety bonds for all of its reclamation obligations as a condition for the Court’s approval of Peabody’s reorganization. Victory for both taxpayers and the environment.  Flawed “self-bonding” ended at this point, subsidies for coal reduced.

Bravo Brady!

Many years later after we celebrated together, Brady’s loving partner Cynthia Hirsch shared with me a new stanza of lyrics to John Prine’s iconic song “Paradise,” which is about Peabody’s coal mining harms to Western Kentucky. Brady and Cynthia added this stanza to their folk song book:

“Many years later, a lawyer named Brady

Said ‘Mr. Peabody,’ just look what you’ve done!

Brady took him to court and told the whole story

Judge said ‘Clean up!’ And justice was won.”

Sing along.  And, there’s much more. As said, Brady was unassuming and just brilliant.

We’ll toast Brady with a fine scotch or glass of red wine!  He’d like that, I think. Many of us greatly miss Brady and all that he did to make a real, positive difference in the world.