Matthew Metz

Matthew Metz founded Metz Law Group in Seattle and serves as of counsel. He takes a small number of civil cases at a time, chosen for their public significance.

He is managing counsel in federal racketeering and Washington Consumer Protection Act litigation brought on behalf of immigrant families against Alexandra Lozano Immigration Law and its affiliated people and entities.

Trial and recovery record

He won a $10.4 million jury verdict in Prima Technology, Inc. v. Alux, Inc. (2015) and collected most of it through enforcement proceedings in Canada, and obtained a judgment in excess of $6 million after a bench trial in the Eastern District of New York in Teitelbaum v. Lin (2010), followed by a successful multi-state collection effort.

He originated the early mesh tape litigation against Mentor Corporation, built a national co-counsel team, and resolved the claims for more than $10 million in 2011. He has originated class actions and managed each from filing through resolution, including Manzano v. Installed Building Products II, LLC, settled for $1,185,000 in 2020.

Prior results do not guarantee or predict a similar outcome in any future matter. Every case turns on its own facts.

Gasoline policy

Metz founded Coltura in 2014, a nonprofit advocating for a gasoline-free America, while still trying cases, and led it through 2025 as he wound down his litigation practice. Between 2014 and 2026 he worked on the problem of reducing gasoline use in the United States, a principal avoidable driver of carbon pollution.

In 2017, when no major environmental organization was working on the question, Metz wrote the first op-ed in the United States calling for a phaseout of gasoline powered vehicles.

In 2018 he published Recharge Required, a survey establishing that fewer than one percent of more than 30,000 vehicles owned by Washington state agencies, cities, and counties were electric, eleven years after the legislature required public fleets, to the extent practicable, to run on electricity or biofuel. The report, published on June 1, 2018, the day the statutory deadline for local governments took effect, was covered by the Associated Press and The Seattle Times, and helped galvanize the movement to electrify public fleets across the United States.

In 2019 he published a law review article on the federal preemption limits of state vehicle electrification mandates in the Michigan Journal of Environmental and Administrative Law. The following year he was the principal advocate for Senate Bill 5811, which adopted the California motor vehicle emission standards in Washington and directed the Department of Ecology to implement them, including the zero emission vehicle program, and to amend its rules over time to keep them consistent with California's. Because of that requirement, when California adopted its 2035 zero emission standard, Washington followed without further legislation.

In 2025 he founded EVQ, PBC (now ClearlyEV), a Delaware public benefit corporation, to commercialize software tools accelerating the transition to electric vehicles.

Publications

Metz, Matthew N., and Janelle London. "State Vehicle Electrification Mandates and Federal Preemption." Michigan Journal of Environmental and Administrative Law 9 (2019): 433.

Metz, Matthew N., and Janelle London. "Governing the Gasoline Spigot: Gas Stations and the Transition Away from Gasoline." Environmental Law Reporter 51 (2021): 10054.

Metz, Matthew, and Janelle London. "EV Incentive Policies Should Target Reducing Gasoline Use." Environmental Law Reporter 52 (2022): 10089.

Admissions and education

Bar admissions

Washington, 1995
California, 1991 (inactive)

Court admissions

W.D. Wash. · E.D. Wash. · Ninth Circuit · Second Circuit

Education

J.D., UCLA School of Law
A.B. Economics, University of Chicago

Languages

English and Spanish

Contact

matthew@metzlawgroup.com
206-583-2745