Goodrich Corp. v. Town of Middlebury
| Decision Date | 29 October 2002 |
| Docket Number | Docket No. 01-6016.,Docket No. 01-6018.,Docket No. 01-6014. |
| Citation | 311 F.3d 154 |
| Parties | GOODRICH CORP. (f/k/a B.F. Goodrich Co.), Crompton Manufacturing Co. (f/k/a Uniroyal Chemical Co., Inc.), Reynolds Metal Co. (f/k/a Reynolds Aluminum Building Products Co.), Naugatuck Glass Co., Naugatuck Treatment Co., Cadbury Beverages, Inc., Coltec Industries, Inc., B.P. Amoco (f/k/a Ken Chas Reserve Co.), Risdon Corp., Unisys Corp., and Kerite Co., Plaintiffs-Appellants-Cross-Appellees, v. TOWN OF MIDDLEBURY, Town of Hamden, Town of Orange, Town of Seymour, Town of Westport, City of New Haven, Defendants-Appellees-Cross-Appellants, Borough of Naugatuck, Defendant-Appellee. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Second Circuit |
David E. Rosengren, Pepe & Hazard LLP, Hartford, CT, for Plaintiffs-Appellants-Cross-Appellees Goodrich Corp., Crompton Manufacturing Co., Inc. and Reynolds Metal Co.
Christopher P. McCormack, Tyler Cooper & Alcorn, LLP, New Haven, CT (Robert W. Allen, Robert B. Flynn, Timothy P. Jensen, Matthew A. Sokol, on the brief), for Plaintiffs-Appellants Members of the Laurel Park Coalition.
Ann Catino, Halloran & Sage LLP, Hartford, Connecticut (Lori D. DiBella and John C. Huggins, Halloran & Sage LLP, Hartford Connecticut, and Nicholas J. Harding, Kosloff & Harding, West Hartford Connecticut, on the brief), for Defendants-Appellees-Cross-Appellants the Towns of Hamden, Middlebury, Orange, Seymour and Westport and the City of New Haven.
Kevin McSherry, McSherry Law Office, Naugatuck, CT, for Defendant-Appellee Borough of Naugatuck.
Before McLAUGHLIN, POOLER and B.D. PARKER, Circuit Judges.
The shades of Jarndyce & Jarndyce stalk this litigation. Charles Dickens, Bleak House. For the third time in a decade, we enter the legal morass created by a half-century of dumping hazardous waste at two Connecticut landfills, named Beacon Heights and Laurel Park, respectively. This time around, we consider, among other things, to what extent several municipalities must contribute to response costs that two coalitions of corporate polluters incurred cleaning up the mess.
We have set forth this case's background in exhaustive detail in two prior opinions. See B.F. Goodrich v. Betkoski, 99 F.3d 505 (2d Cir.1996) ("Betkoski"); B.F. Goodrich Co. v. Murtha, 958 F.2d 1192 (2d Cir.1992) ("Murtha"). We presume some familiarity with these opinions and state only the facts pertinent to this appeal.
The Beacon Heights and Laurel Park landfills accepted industrial wastes, e.g., liquid chemical wastes, deposited by commercial entities and accepted municipal solid waste ("MSW") deposited by several Connecticut municipalities. After the evidence confirmed that leachate1 was escaping from the landfills — a condition that threatened the local water supply — the Environmental Protection Agency ("EPA") designated the landfills as "Superfund" sites on the National Priority List under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980 ("CERCLA"), 42 U.S.C. §§ 9601-75, as amended by the Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act of 1986 ("SARA"), Pub.L. No. 99-499, 100 Stat. 1613 (1986).
The EPA began to identify the parties it believed were responsible for causing the mess. The EPA identified, among others, Terrance and Harold Murtha, and several corporations controlled by them (collectively, the "Murthas"), who owned and operated Laurel Park from 1961 until 1987 and owned Beacon Heights from 1970 to 1987. The EPA also identified several companies that had dumped waste at the landfills as potentially responsible parties ("PRPs").
Two eponymous coalitions comprising corporate polluters, the Beacon Heights Coalition2 (the "BHC") and the Laurel Park Coalition3 (the "LPC"), eventually emerged, entering into separate consent decrees with the EPA. Betkoski, 99 F.3d at 512. Under the consent decrees, the Coalitions agreed to "remediate" (i.e., clean up) the environmental damage to their namesake landfills. Id. Remediation at each landfill required placement of a cap over each landfill and extraction and treatment of dump leachate and groundwater from the landfills.
As we explained in Betkoski, the Murthas settled the claims brought against them by the United States, the State of Connecticut and the BHC, and assigned to the BHC any contribution claims they had against other third-party defendants. Id. Although the Laurel Park Coalition had not been formed when the Murtha consent decree was negotiated, the parties agreed that should an industrial coalition form within 18 months of the entry of the Murthas' consent decree, the coalition would receive a portion of the funds. The LPC formed within that time period and received the allotted funds. Id.
Thereafter, the Coalitions pursued claims against hundreds of third party defendants, including several Connecticut municipalities, seeking contribution toward the costs of the cleanup, pursuant to CERCLA § 113(f), 42 U.S.C. § 9613(f). The Coalitions' contribution claims against the municipalities are posited on the presence of hazardous substances, as constituent parts of consumer and industrial products, in the MSW that the municipalities dumped into the landfills.
In Murtha, we considered the municipalities' appeal from the district court's denial of their motion for summary judgment on the contribution claims brought against them, the BHC, and the Murthas.4 The municipalities argued that: (1) MSW did not fit within CERCLA's definition of "hazardous substance"; (2) the exemption for household hazardous waste under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act ("RCRA"), 42 U.S.C. §§ 6901-6992k, was incorporated into CERCLA; and (3) we should defer to the EPA's interpretation of CERCLA, which purportedly excluded MSW from the definition of "hazardous substance." Murtha, 958 F.2d at 1199, 1201, 1205. We rejected each of these contentions, holding that "the definition of hazardous substance under CERCLA includes municipal solid waste if that waste contains a hazardous substance, found in any amount, that is listed in any of the subsections" of 42 U.S.C. § 9601(14). Murtha, 958 F.2d at 1206.
On remand, the municipalities again moved for summary judgment, this time seeking dismissal of the contribution claims brought by both BHC and LPC. The district court granted the municipalities' motion, holding that they bore no liability whatsoever for contribution under CERCLA because: (1) while products found in their MSW may have contained components or elements identified as hazardous substances under CERCLA, the products were not themselves listed as hazardous substances under the Act; (2) the hazardous substances contained in the products were not in releaseable form; and (3) they dumped only negligible amounts of hazardous substances. B.F. Goodrich Co. v. Murtha, 815 F.Supp. 539, 545-46 (D.Conn.1993).
On appeal, we reversed the district court's grant of summary judgment to the municipalities, holding that: (1) a mixture or waste solution containing any hazardous substance, even if contained only as a constituent element of a product, is deemed "hazardous" under CERCLA; (2) a defendant who disposes of hazardous substances that are not independently releaseable when the waste is dumped may still be held liable under CERCLA; (3) CERCLA's "hazardous substance" definition includes even minuscule or nominal amounts; and (4) genuine issues of material fact precluded summary judgment on whether there were hazardous substances contained in the solid waste the municipalities deposited at the landfills. Betkoski, 99 F.3d at 515-16, 526-27. Accordingly, we remanded the case to the district court for further proceedings.
By this juncture, the Coalitions had settled their claims against the vast majority of third-party defendants. On remand, the district court referred the Coalitions' contribution claims against the remaining municipalities and other third-party defendants to a Special Master (the "Master"), for mediation and, if necessary, an evidentiary hearing followed by a report and recommendation (the "Report") pursuant to Fed.R.Civ.P. 53(e). The Order of Reference charged the Master with "finding facts, drawing conclusions and recommending what, if any, contribution the involved Third-Party Defendant, or potentially responsible party, should be required to make under CERCLA as it has been interpreted by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals." Moreover, the Order of Reference required the Master's report to "recite the factors on which a recommended equitable allocation of the remediation cost as to a Third Party Defendant or potentially responsible party is based."
Through the Master's mediation efforts, a few more third-party defendants settled the Coalitions' contribution claims against them. Thus, when the Master's mediation efforts concluded, only a handful of third-party defendants remained in the contribution action, including defendants the Towns of Hamden, Middlebury, Orange, Seymour and Westport and the City of New Haven (collectively, the "Municipal Defendants"), and defendant-appellee the Borough of Naugatuck. Accordingly, the Master proceeded to the merits of the Coalitions' contribution claims against these parties.5
The Master held an evidentiary hearing over a six-month period, during which 41 witnesses testified and over 500 evidentiary exhibits were introduced. We summarize the testimony of the parties' key witnesses below.
The Coalitions relied extensively on the testimony of Dr. Kirk W. Brown, a Professor of Soil and Crop Sciences at Texas A & M University, to support their claim that the Municipal Defendants' MSW contained hazardous substances that were eventually released into dump leachate. Dr. Brown testified that MSW typically contains...
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