Biography
Katrina represents businesses and trade associations in complex environmental, commercial, and toxic tort litigation and advises clients on project permitting.
Katrina defends state and federal class and mass actions, citizen suits, and enforcement actions. Her experience spans opposing class certification with strong expert and fact evidence, seeking dismissal of nuisance and other tort claims, challenging unreliable expert evidence, advocating for her clients in administrative hearings, and litigating agency approvals for projects.
Katrina also focuses on NEPA issues, wetlands regulation, federal species protection laws, land use law, and New York’s environmental justice and climate laws. She helps clients navigate permitting processes for large interstate projects and work with state and federal regulators to achieve their project goals.
In advising clients, she draws on her experience with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service on national wildlife refuges in Arizona, Colorado, and Wyoming, and as a law clerk with the federal government. Before joining Beveridge & Diamond, Katrina clerked for the U.S. Department of Justice in the Environment & National Resources Division and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in the Office of Enforcement & Compliance Assurance.
Katrina’s experience includes:
- Successfully excluding expert evidence and defeating class certification in a lawsuit seeking medical monitoring and other damages allegedly caused by a fire.
- Defeating class certification in a breach of contract suit involving 20,000 commercial waste collection customers in Florida district court.
- Obtaining dismissal before class certification practice of three putative class actions alleging landfills emitted nuisance odors.
- Obtaining dismissal prior to discovery of six personal injury suits alleging harm from PFAS and other chemicals in New Jersey federal court.
- Defeating class certification in a federal action against a waste-to-energy facility alleging nuisance odors.
- Serving as Endangered Species Act counsel to the developers of the Mountain Valley Pipeline — a $5 billion, 304-mile FERC jurisdictional pipeline extending from Wetzel County, West Virginia, to Pittsylvania County, Virginia.
Katrina is also Deputy Chair of the firm’s Litigation and Waste Management & Recycling practice groups.
Education
- Cornell University (B.S., cum laude, 2012)
- College of Agriculture and Life Science, Natural Resources
- Lewis & Clark (J.D., summa cum laude, 2018)
- Certificate in Environment, Natural Resources, and Energy Law
Bar Admissions
Court Admissions
- U.S. District Court – Southern District of New York
- U.S. District Court – Eastern District of New York
- U.S. Court of Appeals – Eleventh Circuit
Honors & Awards
- "Best Lawyers: Ones To Watch," a Best Lawyers® publication, recognition in Environmental Law (2024-2025)
- The Legal 500, recognition in Environmental Litigation (2023, 2024)
- Rising Star for Environmental Litigation
- Lawyers of the Week, recognition for key role in Sunshine Children's Learning Ctr., LLC v. Waste Connections of Fla., Inc. (2023)
- Lawyers of the Week, recognition for key role in Davies v. S.A. Dunn & Co., LLC and Duncan v. Capital Region Landfills, Inc. (2021)
- Super Lawyers, part of Thomson Reuters, New York Rising Star (2021-2024)
- Capital Pro Bono Honor Roll, High Honors Recognition (2021)