John Estes heads Skadden’s Energy Regulation and Litigation Group. He focuses on FERC enforcement and litigation at the agency and on judicial review. Mr. Estes has defended many of the FERC enforcement cases involving electric and natural gas market manipulation allegations that have become public, including representing Barclays Bank PLC, JP Morgan Ventures Energy Corp., DB Energy Trading, LLC, Rumford Paper Company, Dr. Alan Chen and GreenHat. Two of these cases are among the handful to proceed to federal district court, and have involved litigation of several novel questions. He previously defended Energy Transfer Partners in one of the first FERC market manipulation cases, which settled on favorable terms on the eve of trial. He also defended H.Q. in the first complaint case claiming market manipulation. He has navigated many nonpublic FERC enforcement cases to conclusion without sanction.
In addition, Mr. Estes often has played a lead role in complex FERC cases at trial, typically involving market design, market power or market manipulation issues in organized electric markets. Representative FERC trials include:
– Dynegy in the first two trials in the protracted and highly complex “California Refund Case,” and Aquila and Illinova in the third trial in that case;
– A large coalition of generators in the bitterly fought New England “LICAP” case involving capacity markets;
– Exelon in groundbreaking litigation involving whether FERC should exempt AEP from certain state laws that were preventing AEP from joining PJM; and
– Dynegy and NRG in the “California Long-Term Contract Case.”
He also has played a lead role in numerous agency cases that stopped short of trial, including representing generators in a series of disputes over capacity markets spanning more than a decade. His experience advising clients and litigating disputes regarding organized electric markets dates back 20 years, when those markets were in their infancy. In addition, he has decades of experience handling the energy regulatory aspects of transactional matters.
Mr. Estes also has an active appellate practice. He has argued 27 cases in the United States Courts of Appeals in the D.C., First, Third, Fifth, Sixth, Ninth and Tenth Circuits.
Mr. Estes has been ranked in the top tier each year since 2005 in Chambers USA and Chambers Global: The World’s Leading Lawyers for Business, with clients telling Chambers that he “understands everything and has excellent recall; [is] a genius writer, and when he drafts a brief it gets a level of attention that others may not get.” Most recently, Mr. Estes was selected as a Star Individual for Energy: Electricity (Regulatory & Litigation) in Chambers USA 2019.
He also has been listed in The Best Lawyers in America and The Legal 500 U.S. In addition, Mr. Estes has been named as a leading energy appellate lawyer nationwide and in the D.C. Circuit in Benchmark Litigation.
Among other community activities, Mr. Estes is a member of the board of directors of The Washington Ballet.