Posted on May 20, 2013 by William Hyatt
When the Supreme Court issued its 2009 decision in Burlington N. & Santa Fe RR. Co. v. United States (Burlington Northern), Superfund practitioners were encouraged to think that CERCLA joint and several liability could be avoided by arguing that the harm is divisible and therefore capable of being apportioned. Subsequent decisions in the lower courts have dampened that encouragement. The most recent case in point is the May 1, 2013 decision by the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin in United States v. NCR Corp. (NCR Corp.), the latest in a long line of decisions involving the Fox River Superfund Site.. After an eleven day trial, the District Court permanently enjoined NCR and the other defendants to comply with a unilateral administrative order requiring them to clean up PCB-contaminated sediments in the Fox River.
The court had previously issued a preliminary injunction to the same effect, which was affirmed by the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit on interlocutory appeal. The District Court had also held that EPA’s remedy selection was not arbitrary, capricious or otherwise unlawful and that NCR was not entitled to contribution, decisions not yet reviewed by the Court of Appeals, leaving NCR with apportionment as its best argument in the District Court to avoid having to bear the entire burden of the cleanup.
In the latest decision, the District Court rejected attempts by NCR (and the other defendants) to prove that the “harm” in one of the operable units of the Fox River was divisible and could therefore be apportioned. The Seventh Circuit had ruled that “harm,” for this purpose, “was best defined with reference to the contamination, as set forth in the government’s remediation rules.” The District Court began its analysis of apportionment by pointing out that exceptions to joint and several liability will be “rare.” According to the District Court, to demonstrate that the harm is divisible, a defendant bears the burden of proving two things: first, that the harm is theoretically capable of being divided, a question of law, and second, that there is a reasonable basis for an apportionment, a question of fact. Burlington Northern, the District Court observed, involved only the second of these elements (“Yet, even though it is undeniable that Burlington Northern loosened the rules governing how a given harm might be apportioned, it did not address the key issue here, which is whether the harm is theoretically divisible in the first place” [emphasis in original]).
Applying the analysis of Sections 433A and 875 of the Restatement (Second) of Torts, both Burlington Northern and the Seventh Circuit concluded that some harms will not be theoretically capable of apportionment. Thus, if one of the causes is “sufficient” in and of itself to bring about the result, the harm will not be divisible and apportionment will not be appropriate. The question is “whether one polluter should be considered such a significant cause of the harm that the harm attributable to that cause is incapable of being divided.” Further, some kinds of harms will simply be unsuitable for divisibility by their very nature, as when a chemical is deemed to be harmful when it “surpasses a certain amount” or when a chemical becomes harmful only when mixed with other chemicals.
It is interesting that the courts continue to follow the Second Restatement even though there is a more recent Third Restatement of Torts (2000). While the courts have not provided any basis for their continued reliance on the Second Restatement, some commentators have opined that the Third Restatement can be read as trending away from joint liability and encouraging apportionment.
The District Court observed that whether a harm is theoretically capable of apportionment, although a question of law, is heavily dependent upon the underlying facts. In this case, after an exhaustive review of the evidence, the District Court concluded that NCR had not met its burden of rebutting the government’s contention that the NCR discharges were a “sufficient cause” of the harm. The District Court defined the “harm” as contamination in the sediments above 1 ppm of PCBs. The Court found that NCR had not meaningfully disputed that the remedy for the sediments would have been the same even if NCR had been the only contributor. In other words, because of NCR’s discharges, the same remedial measures would have been required regardless of whether or not discharges from others had occurred. Since NCR’s discharges would, on their own, “require roughly the same remedial measures that are now being undertaken, [NCR] could be deemed a sufficient cause of the harm.” Under those circumstances, the District Court concluded, the harm could not be deemed divisible and apportionment would be inappropriate.
The District Court then went on to conclude that joint and several liability should attach even if NCR had not been a “sufficient cause” of the harm, “so long as the party is necessary to the harm.” Thus, for example, if one party’s discharge produces a concentration below action levels, such that it is not a “sufficient cause” of the harm, when that discharge is combined with other discharges that cause the concentration to exceed the action level, the first discharge is a “necessary” cause and joint and several liability should attach.
The District Court concluded that the “harm” was not theoretically capable of apportionment, thereby avoiding the necessity of determining how apportionment might be accomplished. This decision suggests that the battleground in the apportionment arena is likely to shift from how apportionment is conducted (the issue addressed by Burlington Northern) to the question of whether apportionment is appropriate in the first place. This decision provides a useful guide for practitioners regarding how courts may evaluate this threshold question, and highlights the importance of how courts define the “harm” at issue.
Tags: contamination, joint and several liability, harm, apportionment, Superfund