High Court's CERCLA Ruling Adds Uncertainty To Cleanups, Lawyers Warn

摘要

The high court's ruling giving state courts jurisdiction to hear contamination damages claims but preserving EPA authority to decide on any additional Superfund remedy may add uncertainty to the finality of cleanup decisions, creating openings for landowners seeking remedy revisions provided they obtain EPA's approval, say attorneys. The high court's ruling "reaches the reasonable result that the federal government's cleanup decision under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act ("CERCLA")... probably cannot be superseded by a state jury in this case, but it leaves a lot of questions about the implications of state law for federal remedy selection going forward," says David Mandelbaum, an attorney with Greenberg Traurig, in an April 20 article. And J. Michael Showalter, an attorney with Schiff Hardin, wrote in an April 21 posting on his law firm's website that while the court's opinion stresses "EPA's continued primacy" in deciding remedies and "should give a measure of comfort" to entities that conduct cleanups, "parties still may be vulnerable to state court claims by landowners that convince the EPA that the remedies they request do not threaten overall cleanups."