Law and the Environment : Environmental Lawyer & Attorney : Foley Hoag Law Firm : Boston, Washington D.C.

In late 2009, Judge Griesbach ruled, in Appleton Papers v. George A. Whiting Paper, that parties who were significantly more “blameworthy” than others were not entitled to contribution from the less blameworthy parties. Last week, Judge Griesbach ruled on the cross-contribution motions from the defendants. 

The defendants took a simple view. If the plaintiffs are not entitled to contribution from the defendants, because the plaintiffs were almost entirely at fault, then the defendants should be able to receive 100% of their own response costs in contribution from the plaintiffs. Plaintiffs, not surprisingly, took a contrary view. Plaintiffs' position was that the court still needed to assess the defendants’ contribution claims in light of the full panoply of equitable factors and that, because the plaintiffs had cooperated with the government and the defendants had caused some releases themselves, the plaintiffs should not have to pay 100% of defendants’ costs.

Judge Griesbach was having nothing of the plaintiffs’ arguments. To him, it remains really a simple analysis:

[C]ases reject the idea that a district court has to follow some sort of mechanical laundry-list approach to assessing contribution liability, and I am satisfied that basing contribution on fault, under the totality of the circumstances of this case, is a sound approach to resolving the liability for the river cleanup.

I remain of the view that, while the outcome of the case is permissible, it is a surprise that the judge was so willing to make these decisions on summary judgment; they seem more the stuff of trial to me. However, the judge’s willingness to decide this case on summary judgment only emphasizes the important lessons of this case. Fault matters, and the parties who succeed in tarring other parties with the label of “fault” are going to be the big winners in contribution cases – Gore Factors be damned.

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It may be an apocryphal story, but my understanding as to why so many small municipal landfills in New Hampshire ended up on the NPL is that some bright light in the Granite State thought that Superfund was a public works program and that the fund would pay for the landfill closures. The result? Small towns became PRPs, responsible for Superfund response costs which, in some cases, approximated their annual municipal budget.

I recall going to a public meeting concerning EPA’s preferred alternative at one site. At most sites, the public pleads for EPA to require more cleanup – because someone else will be paying, of course. Here, the public was begging for less cleanup, because they thought that they had better ways to spend the money. Even if the money had to be devoted to public health and safety, they were confident that spending money on traffic lights and police and fire departments would yield a greater return.

I was reminded of this episode by EPA’s announcement last week of the release of guidance recommending the removal of PCB-containing light ballasts from schools. According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, New York City estimates that the cost to remove the ballasts will be $1 billion. Anyone think that NYC might have a better use for $1 billion in school spending?

There are really two points to this story. The first is that legislation in response to panics is not a good idea. The notion that there are special legislative provisions for PCBs, unlike the myriad of other toxic chemicals which are handled under provisions of general application is, to use a technical term, nuts. It has led to a separate PCB program within EPA which, in the bureaucratic nature of things, has to justify its existence, leading to costly recommendations such as those made last week.

Second, what if it really would be better to spend money on fire trucks, or traffic lights, or anti-drug programs in schools? To be fair to EPA, this is not a question the agency is tasked with answering. However, shouldn’t somebody be asking and answering such questions before regulations with such potential consequences are promulgated? 

This is not about cost-benefit analysis, which simply asks whether the benefit of the requirement is worth its costs. It’s not even cost-effectiveness analysis, at least as EPA normally thinks about it. Such analysis would normally only try to determine the most cost-effective way to eliminate PCBs. I’m after something deeper. Even after we’ve determined the most cost-effective way to eliminate PCBs from light ballasts, I want to know how much that would cost, how much risk reduction it would achieve, and whether more risk reduction could be obtained by spending the money elsewhere. 

I can dream, can’t I?

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Sometimes, good lawyering does matter. When DVL found PCBs on its property in Fort Edward, New York, and when it looked up and realized that GE had operated a manufacturing facility which utilized PCBs “almost adjacent” to DVL’s property, DVL and its attorneys may have thought that they had a slam dunk case on liability. Not so fast. Last week, in DVL v. General Electric, Judge Lawrence Kahn awarded GE summary judgment on liability, because DVL had failed to provide even enough evidence of GE’s liability to survive summary judgment. 

DVL did have more than just GE’s proximity on its side. The types of PCB Aroclors used by GE at its facility were the same as were found at the DVL property. There was contamination on GE’s property. However, GE denied disposing of its contamination on DVL’s property, DVL never saw any GE capacitors on its property, and groundwater wells installed by GE on DVL property to determine if contaminated groundwater had migrated off of GE’s property were non-detect for PCBs. 

Unfortunately for DVL, that was the limit of its evidence. It did obtain a declaration from James Ludlam, an employee of the New York Department of Environmental Conservation, who clearly is no fan of GE, and who stated that GE wastes were at the DVL property. However, DVL did not identify Mr. Ludlam as an expert and Mr. Ludlam had no personal knowledge that GE disposed of anything at the Site. Judge Kahn ruled that DVL was improperly trying to parlay a lay witness into an undisclosed expert witness and struck Mr. Ludlam’s declarations. 

Judge Kahn agreed that liability under CERCLA can be based solely on circumstantial evidence, “especially where the passage of time has made direct evidence difficult or impossible to obtain.” Nonetheless, he concluded that the circumstantial evidence proffered by DVL was not enough to establish its prima facie case. DVL’s case was basically that GE manufactured the types of PCBs found at the DVL property and that its historical disposal practices were, shall we say, messy. Judge Kahn concluded that this was not enough to establish that GE’s wastes had been disposed of at the DVL property. 

Evidence that merely “presents probabilities rather than proof,” “relies upon a collection of facts that could be summarized as ’if it is there, it must be theirs,’” or is “vague and imprecise, of questionable reliability, and therefore not sufficiently probative to create an issue for trial” is insufficient to hold a party liable under CERCLA. 

I think that the decision in DVL v. GE is probably correct. However, it’s hard not to be left with a nagging feeling that the PCBs probably were from the GE facility and that DVL was not well-served by its lawyers. DVL clearly did some looking, because they had a declaration from someone who used to play in the area.  However, were there really no former employees of GE or employees of any waste handlers of GE who could have testified? How about more sophisticated analytical work that would have not merely confirmed that the PCBs were the same Aroclors as used by GE, but were somehow fingerprinted as being the same as the PCBs found in the soil at the GE site? 

If this case stands for anything, it’s that the details matter; the actual evidence matters.

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Last week, Judge William Griesbach, of the Federal District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin, issued an important Superfund contribution decision, which shows just how much equitable discretion judges have in resolving contribution claims. In Appleton Papers v. George Whiting Paper, Judge Griesbach ruled, on summary judgment, that one equitable factor, knowledge of the potential environmental harm caused by PCBs, trumped all others, and that the plaintiffs, who had manufactured carbonless copy paper, or CCP, had no right to contribution from paper companies which used CCP and as a result discharged substantial amounts of PCBs into the Fox River.

The basis for Judge Griesbach’s holding was that “between parties who produced the product and those who merely processed it and recycled it along with all other paper products or water sources, these latter parties are significantly less blameworthy.” (The Judge’s italics, not mine.) This is not necessarily an unreasonable conclusion and probably within the Judge’s discretion to make, but does it follow that that is a sufficient basis to determine, without a trial, that the defendants were – literally – infinitely less blameworthy?

Interestingly, the plaintiffs had produced evidence that the defendants’ discharges had polluted the Fox River, even aside from PCBs. The Judge held that, because such other pollution did not cause response costs, it was irrelevant to the equitable judgment regarding who should pay to clean up PCBs.

The Judge also acknowledged that much of the contamination occurred before the plaintiffs themselves knew of the environmental risks posed by PCBs. Notably, however, the Judge did not discuss whether response costs would have been any different had discharges ceased as soon as the plaintiffs gained knowledge of the risks.

I’m not surprised that the plaintiffs in this contribution action are being held to bear the lion’s share of response costs. I am surprised that, on summary judgment, the court was able to conclude that the defendants’ share, notwithstanding their knowing pollution of the Fox River, and notwithstanding that much of the harm was caused before anyone had knowledge of the risks posed by PCBs, was a big, fat, zero.

What’s the real lesson here? The real lesson is that, while Judge Griesbach both noted that his equitable power is “broad and loose,” and acknowledged that it is “not unfettered,” the emphasis is greatly on the side of "broad and loose," and less so on the side of “not unfettered.” 

I’ve made this point in the past, but lesson one of Superfund contribution actions remains – Get The Judge On Your Side.

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