ROCKETRY AND MISSILE DEFENSE LITIGATION

Egan, Fitzpatrick, Malsch & Lawrence has evolved its litigation practice into the fields of rocketry and missile defense issues, capitalizing on the experience of its attorneys in physics and engineering.

National Missile Defense Program

The firm invested over $400,000 of its time pro bono assisting Dr. Nira Schwartz, a prominent missile defense scientist, in her extraordinary challenge to the technical viability of the national missile defense program as represented to the Government by Boeing, TRW, and Raytheon, its lead contractors. This billion-dollar fraud claim, which was featured on 60 Minutes and in numerous New York Times articles, spawned an intensive GAO investigation, a three-year probe by the Justice Department and the Defense Criminal Investigative Service, and a widespread consensus among U.S. arms control specialists that the current kinetic-kill missile defense paradigm, using infrared sensing technology, cannot physically be made to work.

National Association of Rocketry/Tripoli Rocketry Association Litigation

Egan, Fitzpatrick, Malsch & Lawrence is lead counsel in a lawsuit by the National Association of Rocketry (NAR) and the Tripoli Rocketry Association challenging in federal district court regulations enacted by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms that purports to regulate ammonium perchlorate composite propellant used by these organizations in high-powered amateur rockets. The firm also represented NAR in successful rulemaking proceedings governing amateur rocketry before the Federal Aviation Administration, and it assisted both agencies in proceedings before the Department of Transportation involving transport of rocket motors. Mr. Egan, an avid amateur rocketeer, is a recipient of NAR’s Galloway Award for exemplary public service in rocketry. In 2006, the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit declared victory for our clients in a case challenging the authority of the ATF to regulate sport rocket motors as "explosives".