Roger Worthington flitted around his sprawling brewery in the mountain town of Bend, Ore., on a recent Saturday, moving with a frenetic energy. He tried a new wings recipe from his young chef, congratulated the brewmaster on a recent prize and sipped a pilsner as he got ready to introduce a rock band.
On Wednesday, Mr. Worthington is expected to appear in a quite different setting: in Washington before the House Judiciary Committee, which is investigating him.
Aside from selling beer, Mr. Worthington is a prominent attorney pursuing a $50 billion lawsuit against oil companies over their role in climate change. And that has made him a target of congressional Republicans.
Mr. Worthington, 65, is helping represent Multnomah County, home to Portland, in a unique case against the energy industry. The county claims oil companies bear responsibility for a specific heat wave five years ago that killed 69 people.
It is one of some three dozen lawsuits that have been filed by state and local governments arguing that the fossil fuel industry should be held accountable for its role accelerating climate change. But it’s unusual in that it claims oil companies are responsible for a particular extreme weather event.
Mr. Worthington’s environmental advocacy and deep pockets — he made a fortune years ago representing victims of asbestos exposure — have made him a lightning rod for critics, including some in Congress.
He’s been swept up in the House Judiciary’s Committee’s long-running investigation into the Environmental Law Institute, a nonpartisan group that publishes educational guides for judges. Republicans on the committee claim the group’s guides are part of an effort to influence federal judges in climate lawsuits, and they say Mr. Worthington may have had improper access to one of its guides before it was published.
On Wednesday, he is scheduled to be in Washington for a deposition in that inquiry.
Mr. Worthington denied any connection to the Environmental Law Institute and called the investigation a politically motivated attempt to stop climate litigation.
“If anything, their efforts to intimidate me backfired,” he said. “They poked the bear.”
The Environmental Law Institute denied having any ties with Mr. Worthington and said it does not participate in litigation, coordinate with parties in cases or advise judges how they should rule.
The lawsuit, filed in 2023, argues that the deadly heat wave was a result of the defendants’ efforts to cover up the dangers of global warming.
The allegations against Mr. Worthington, combined with the prominence of the Portland case, mean he looms large in the specialized world of lawsuits over global warming.
Mr. Worthington was born in Northern California. His mother was a kindergarten teacher, and his father was a Marine and former boxer who went on to earn a doctorate and become a peace and labor activist. As a child, he said, his mother would bring him to walk picket lines in support of striking farm workers led by César Chávez.
His career took a few twists and turns before he settled on law. During college, Mr. Worthington spent three summers doing manual labor for a contractor at an Exxon refinery in Baytown, Texas, only to quit one day, he said, after seeing a bird die in an oily puddle.
“I left my tools. I just — I quit,” he said during an interview at his brewery in Bend.
He realized a legal career was for him in the early 1980s, after he started volunteering at a law firm working with Vietnam veterans suing over exposure to Agent Orange.
“That was it,” he said. “I’m gonna be a lawyer.”
He began representing shipyard workers in asbestos cases in the late 1980s, and later opened his own firm and moved to Southern California.
As his practice grew, Mr. Worthington began making significant donations for mesothelioma research and environmental programs. One such gift was $600,000 to the University of Oregon’s law school in support of the work of Mary Christina Wood, a legal scholar who created the framework for Juliana v. United States, a constitutional climate lawsuit brought by young people that has become a model around the world.
He has a sprawling home in Bend, a vacation town with a big cycling scene. It’s full of mementos of his own interest in bike racing — including framed cycling jerseys and his first bike — as well as posters for some of his brewery’s beers, including one called The Litigator, an “uncompromising I.P.A.”
Much of his time is spent at the brewery, which features, among other things, a rooftop observatory with a giant telescope. Sitting there recently, he noted that in previous generations, “There was an idea that climate change is a problem for your kids and grandkids.” But looking out at the Cascade Mountains, he noted more immediate effects — a lack of snow in the winter and hotter, drier summers with more wildfires.
The county retained Mr. Worthington’s law firm along with another, Simon Greenstone Panatier, to pursue its lawsuit alongside its own in-house lawyers in 2023. The litigation is structured so that his firm gets paid only if it wins damages.
The defendants in Multnomah County’s case and many of the others like it have argued that the lawsuits are an attempt to regulate global greenhouse gas emissions, which they claim is pre-empted by the federal Clean Air Act. The plaintiffs argue their cases are about holding the companies accountable for a deceptive campaign to downplay the risks of oil and gas.
The House Judiciary Committee’s claim against Mr. Worthington echoes arguments made by Chevron in the county’s lawsuit last September. Chevron had said the court should bar the county from referencing two scientific studies, alleging that Mr. Worthington had been involved in the papers and had not disclosed that fact.
Chevron’s lawyers also cited the fact that Mr. Worthington’s law firm posted on its website a pre-publication version of an Environmental Law Institute training module for judges. They said that suggested an inappropriately close relationship with the group.
Multnomah County’s legal team responded that the motion was baseless. Mr. Worthington said in a sworn declaration that he had provided partial funding for one of the studies, which was noted in the study, and that he had played no role in the research, writing, or editing of it.
The judge criticized Mr. Worthington over the studies but allowed the case to proceed.
As for the Environmental Law Institute’s training module for judges, Mr. Worthington said in an interview that he had corresponded with its author as part of his research for the lawsuit. He said he had no ties to the group and had posted the manuscript on his website “to educate people.”
The House Judiciary Committee issued a subpoena to Mr. Worthington in May. In a statement last week, Stefanie Farrell, a spokeswoman for the House Judiciary Committee, said the inquiry into the Environmental Law Institute came about because “radical environmentalists and the climate lobby are trying to improperly influence judges.”
Nick Collins, a spokesman for the institute, said the group provides evidence-based tools for judges understand scientific and technical evidence in the growing number of cases involving climate law, policy or science.
Judge Adele Ridenour took over the case in January and presided over recent hearings attended by Mr. Worthington. The courtroom in downtown Portland was packed with teams of lawyers for the roughly two dozen defendants, the county and a smattering of observers.
Mr. Worthington listened intently as the lawyers for the industry, led by Chevron, sparred with his co-counsel. The main thrust of their argument was that the judge should toss the case immediately.
Theodore J. Boutrous, Jr. of the law firm Gibson Dunn represented Chevron at the hearing. “This case should be dismissed, because it asserts claims that are far beyond the reach of state tort law,” he said on Friday. The county’s claims, he said, are “barred by the federal constitution and Clean Air Act.”
The judge said she would issue a ruling soon.
Mr. Worthington said he considers the Portland climate lawsuit a last hurrah. He’s winding down his legal practice and intends to focus on other interests. Starting a farm to grow strawberries and papayas. Maybe launching a boutique hotel at his brewery in Bend. He said he’s done with bike racing.
Sitting recently in the brewery, near the rooftop telescope, he noted the long trajectory of asbestos litigation. It began in the 1960s, but the many of the largest verdicts in favor of victims didn’t come until decades later. “With fossil fuels, we’re just getting started,” he said.
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