COURT RESTORES MAJOR SUPERFUND COST RECOVERY CLAIM AGAINST DOD

摘要

An appellate court has restored a major Superfund cost recovery claim against the Department of Defense (DOD), opening the door to several similar suits against the department in the wake of a Supreme Court ruling that cleared the way for the lawsuits. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit on Nov. 20 reversed its prior decision in the case DuPont v. United States, in which the chemical giant is seeking to use section 107 of the Superfund law to recover what the company has said is hundreds of millions of dollars in cleanup costs from DOD for contamination at sites where the government may also be liable. DuPont, along with several other major industry groups, had sought to use section 107 to recover cleanup costs incurred in voluntary cleanups after the Supreme Court ruled in 2004 in Cooper Industries v. Aviall that section 113 of Superfund, the traditional cost recovery mechanism, was only available to parties who had been sued by the government.