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| Additional information |
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| Gough, Shanahan, Johnson & Waterman, PLLP |
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Overview:
Gough, Shanahan represents a broad range of individual, insurance, and other corporate clients. In addition to the general practice of law, the firm practice emphasizes insurance defense and insurance coverage law, healthcare, safety and employment counseling and litigation, environmental law, administrative law, banking law and regulation, employment and labor law, family law, wills and estates, and governmental relations. The firm also has a strong practice in real estate and property law, personal injury, energy, transportation, products liability, immigration, intellectual property (patents, copyrights and trademarks), lobbying, and construction litigation. The firm has well-established specialty practices in oil and gas, employment, mining, water quality, tribal law, water rights, air quality, timber management, endangered species, energy minerals, industrial minerals, public school districts, and state, local and estate taxation. The firm can assist clients with state and federal regulatory permits and approvals, compliance and enforcement issues, government relations, international business, and experienced representation before agencies and courts on a variety of state, local and federal matters. |
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History:
Gough, Shanahan, Johnson & Waterman is one of the oldest law firms in Montana. The firm was founded in 1879 during Montana’s territorial gold rush days.
From the firm’s beginnings in the turbulent territorial days of the Last Chance Gulch gold rush, development during the reign of Montana’s “copper barons,” and through the resource conflicts of the 1990’s, Gough, Shanahan, Johnson & Waterman has maintained a diversified practice with an emphasis on the natural resources of the state.
Notable Firm Members
Joseph Kemp Toole, founding the firm with his brother, Edwin Warren Toole, was a key figure in Montana’s early history. Toole was admitted to the bar at the age of twenty in 1871. During Toole’s terms as delegate to the 49th and 50th Congress of the United States, he spoke often in favor of statehood for Montana. His efforts were rewarded by the passage of the Enabling Act of 1889, which allowed the people of Montana Territory to form a constitution and state government. Toole was elected the new state’s first governor the same year.
William Wallace, who became First Assistant Attorney General of the United States (1913), was an early member of the firm. He became a senior partner in the Wall Street firm of Chadbourne & Parke. Wallace and Decius S. Wade, Chief Justice of the Montana Territorial Supreme Court, were partners with the firm through the 1890’s.
In 1980 William Coldiron was the solicitor of the Department of the Interior and later returned to Montana in 1984 to become a senior partner in Gough, Shanahan.
The name of the firm was changed to Gough, Shanahan, Johnson, and Waterman in 1978. The four partners named are Newell Gough, Ward Shanahan, Cordell Johnson, and Ronald Waterman. Newell Gough retired in 1994 and Cordell Johnson retired in 1996. Both William Coldiron and Ward Shanahan were recipients of the William J. Jameson Award from the State Bar of Montana for distinguished legal service. |
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