The Supreme Court on Tuesday named San Francisco business lawyer Kristin Linsley Myles, a onetime clerk for Justice Antonin Scalia, to be a Special Master to gather evidence and report to the Court on a dispute between two states over sharing the waters of the Catawba River.Â
Myles is a partner with the firm of Munger, Tolles & Olson. The firm says that her practice “has focused upon complex business litigation in a variety of areas affecting the firm’s corporate clients.” She has degrees magna cum laude from Harvard University and Harvard Law School. She clerked for Scalia in the 1989-1990 Term, and earlier for Judge Douglas Ginsburg on the D.C. Circuit Court.
Her assignment, described in this order by the Court, is in the case of South Carolina v. North Carolina, 138 Original. The Court agreed on Oct. 1 to allow South Carolina to sue its neighbor directly in the Court in a claim that North Carolina is approving transfers of waters out of the Catawba in amounts that exceed its equitable share. This has resulted in a reduction of flow of water into South Carolina, the suit claims.
The bill of complaint in the lawsuit is centered on a 1991 North Carolina law that, according to South Carolina, authorized the transfer of at least 48 million gallons of water a day from the river basin to basins of other rivers in North Carolina.  Both states, the complaint says, have issued drought advisoiry warnings for the Catawba basin. One condition that has resulted in South Carolina, the state asserts, is that water was made undrinkable in the city of Camden.
Customarily, when the Court agrees to hear a complex case that has not been tried in lower courts (because it is a dispute directly between two states), it names a Special Master to conduct the equivalent of discovery and a trial, and then provide recommendations on a final decision. There is no time limit for the lawsuit to play out and, ordinarily, they take several years.
CLICK HERE FOR FULL VERSION OF THIS STORY