Court Rules Firms That Clean Hazwaste Can Sue for Costs
WASHINGTON, DC (ENS) - The Supreme Court ruled Monday that companies can sue to recover costs when they voluntarily clean up hazardous material at Superfund sites.
The justices ruled unanimously that the federal Superfund law allows potentially responsible parties to sue the government to recover costs incurred in voluntary cleanups.
The Bush administration's lawyers argued that companies themselves must first be sued by regulators under the Superfund law or be targeted with government enforcement action before they can sue others.
Congress intended to reduce lawsuits while encouraging settlements and cleanups supervised by the government, the administration told the justices.
The opinion written by Justice Clarence Thomas holds that 'accepting the government's interpretation' would render one section of the Superfund law 'confusing.'
Because the statute defines potentially responsible parties 'so broadly as to sweep in virtually all persons likely to incur cleanup costs,' accepting the government's interpretation 'would reduce the number of potential plaintiffs to almost zero,' making part of the law 'a dead letter,' Justice Thomas wrote.
In this case, respondent Atlantic Research leased property at the Shumaker Naval Ammunition Depot east of Camden, Arkansas, a facility operated by the Department of Defense where Atlantic Research retrofitted rocket motors for the United States.
Using a high-pressure water spray, Atlantic Research removed pieces of propellant from the motors and then burned the propellant pieces. Some of the wastewater and burned fuel contaminated soil and groundwater at the site.
Atlantic Research cleaned the site at its own expense and then sought to recover some of its costs by suing the United States under two sections of the Superfund law.
The District Court dismissed the case, but the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed that decision, holding that one section of the law does, in fact, allow such a suit. The Supreme Court upheld the Appeals Court's ruling.
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