Byron Starns Email & Phone Number

Byron Starns is an environmental attorney and partner at Stinson LLP, where he has handled a wide range of major litigation and held senior management positions. His cases have included environmental enforcement and cost recovery suits, contested utility and energy matters, contested major facility permitting proceedings, consumer protection and business regulation enforcement proceedings before state and federal agencies, construction and design professional liability cases, commercial disputes, intellectual property disputes, antitrust class actions, product liability cases, and condemnation proceedings. He has led litigation teams for major matters involving related cases in multiple jurisdictions and massive document and deposition discovery throughout the country. These cases involved discovery and privilege litigation, extensive expert witness preparation and discovery, and document management systems that are characteristic of major, hotly contested litigation. Byron began his legal career at the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office, trying highway condemnation and license revocation cases around the state. Later he tried cases and argued appeals in the State Solicitor General’s Division, primarily defending constitutional challenges. Byron was the state’s lead trial lawyer in what became the longest environmental enforcement trial in state history, U.S. v. Reserve Mining Co. That case was tried daily in U.S. District Court from August 1973 through May 1974, followed by a one-month remand trial on remedy in the summer of 1974. Byron argued eleven appeals in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit in this landmark case. After the Reserve trial, Byron served as Minnesota’s Chief Deputy Attorney General, and was responsible for management of the State’s 150 lawyers. As Chief Deputy, he continued to handle cases, including two that were argued in the U.S. Supreme Court (Contract Clause and Equal Protection Clause issues).

Listed skills include Environmental Law, Environmental Impact Assessment, Energy Law, Public Utilities, and 18 others.