Lawyers / Professionals

Mr. Blank is co-chair of McGuireWoods' Energy Litigation Group. His energy focus is on natural gas litigation including shale, coalbed methane, conventional, and propane. He has litigated mineral rights, royalty, transportation, construction, consumer protection, antitrust, fraud and other complex litigation in this arena. He has tried dozens of bench and jury trials, and has appeared in district, circuit and federal courts, as well as in AAA arbitrations. He has been reported in two cases in the Virginia Supreme Court, one in the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, and one in the U.S. Supreme Court. Mr. Blank has litigated cases in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio, Maryland and Virginia. As part of the firm's membership in the Marcellus Shale Coalition, he is a member of the Legislative Affairs - Federal Issues and Infrastructure Suppliers Network subcommittees.

He focuses on complex civil litigation with an emphasis on energy, construction, real estate and fiduciary duty litigation as well as the coordination and management of large document reviews and production. Since 2000, cases representative of his practice include:

• Multiple royalty gas and related class action litigation in Ohio and Virginia.
• Multiple mineral rights litigation associated with natural gas in the Appalachian Basin.
• AAA multiday breach of contract cogeneration arbitration involving multimillion-dollar cross claims.
• AAA multiweek energy power plant construction arbitration involving multimillion-dollar cross claims.
• Virginia Circuit Court waste injunction action for energy sector client.
• Virginia Circuit Court multiday quiet title bench trial.
• Virginia Circuit Court cases involving corporate dissolution.
• Maryland patent litigation involving synthetic horse track surface.
• U.S. Department of Justice investigation regarding accounting issues related to revenue collection involving interviews of hundreds of employees, and collection of millions of pages of hard and electronic documents.