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new product and/or new technology, faces the challenge of balancing large economic profits against uncertain (and possibly huge) environmental and/or health detrimental effects. The stylized fact is that this has lead to large differences in regulations among countries, which may reflect the preferences of various interest groups involved in the process.  \footnote{See Vigani and Olper (2013), for genetically modified organisms, and Johnson and Boersma (2012), for hydraulic fracturing to extract shale gas.}  This paper aims at representing the government decision-making in such situations, accounting for the intervention of interest groups, in a context of scientific controversy. Specifically, we analyze a Tullock contest (Tullock, 1980), with the two contestants being an industrial and an environmental lobby. The key assumption in our model is that the industrial lobby has private information about the detrimental externality, but can be held liable for damage \textit{ex post}. We determine the equilibrium of the contest and derive both its positive and normative properties. Importantly, we identify in which circumstances the lobbying activities foster a more or less efficient decision-making by the government, which may justify implementing \emph{ex} ante \emph{ex ante}  constitutional rules to restrict frame  lobbying activities  (Brennan and Buchanan, 1985). In a sense, Cropper et al. (1992) provide an empirical background to our analysis. They examine the EPA's decision to cancel or continue the registrations of cancer-causing pesticides between 1975 and 1989. During this period, the final decision followed a two steps procedure, with the EPA first proposing a decision based on a risk-benefit analysis, and the interest groups then contesting it. Cropper et al. (1992) find that the EPA's decisions indeed balanced risks against benefits, but simultaneously that intervention by special-interest groups was also important in the regulatory process. They conclude that their ``findings provide both comfort and concern to those interested in improving the efficiency of environmental regulation'' (p. 178).