John J. Fialka details findings from a watchdog group's report showing the lead industry attorney in a highly sensitive appeals court clean air case had hob-nobbed with appellate judges at a guest ranch ... courtesy of a Bozeman, Mont., conservative group and about the time the case was being decided, in 1999. The Foundation for Research on Economics & the Environment, FREE, funded primarily by corporate interests, hosted Judges Douglas Ginsburg and David Sentelle and industry lawyer Ed Warren. Both Ginsburg and Warren were directors of the group, and Ginsburg was among the judges making the decision. Fialka calls the case "one of the biggest environmental cases of the 1990s," and he writes that the appeals court struck down EPA soot and smog regulations, saying Congress had not authorized the agency to issue those rules. The U.S. Supreme Court later reversed that decision. Fialka quotes a Fordham University legal ethics professor as saying he had been retained by one of the foundations supporting FREE and had found the practice allowable in light of "existing norms." The watchdog group's leader -- Douglas T. Kendall of the Community Rights Counsel, sees things differently, pointing to "serious ethical problems."