Parties Announce Settlement of Long-Standing Litigation Involving the Cleanup of Contaminated Property in San Diego, California
April 3, 2007
After years of litigation and many months of intense negotiations, a settlement has been reached that requires the cleanup of the former Teledyne Ryan Aeronautical (TRA) facility, located on 44-acres adjacent to the San Diego International Airport near downtown San Diego.
For more than sixty years, former tenants of the TRA site manufactured aircraft, missiles and other aeronautical equipment, leaving widespread chemical contamination in the soil and groundwater at the property and in a portion of San Diego Bay known as Convair Lagoon. In 2003, the San Diego Unified Port District sued the former tenants in federal court under Sections 107 and 113 of the federal Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) and various state statutes and common law theories of liability. The Defendants then counter-sued against the Port District and brought in two additional parties, the San Diego Regional Airport Authority and General Dynamics, Inc., as cross-defendants. The Airport Authority filed its own set of claims against the Defendants, including a claim brought under the federal Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA).
The beginning of serious settlement discussions was prompted by two court rulings in March 2006. In one, the court granted a motion for summary adjudication by the Port District and held that the Defendants were barred from recovering environmental response costs under CERCLA Section 113, based on the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision Cooper Industries, Inc. v. Aviall Services, Inc. In the second ruling, the court granted a separate motion for summary adjudication by General Dynamics, based on various applicable statutes of limitation. After the Court’s rulings were issued, the litigation was stayed to allow settlement discussions to proceed, although the stay subsequently was lifted and the matter was set for trial on May 1, 2007.
The recently announced settlement agreement resolves all the remaining issues in the case and ensures that the TRA site will be cleaned up in a prompt and comprehensive manner. Among other things, the settlement agreement:
- Allows the Port District to proceed with demolishing the former manufacturing buildings and other structures still remaining on the site;
- Requires the Defendants to move forward with the cleanup under the terms of a Cleanup and Abatement Order (CAO) issued by the San Diego Regional Water Quality Control Board;
- Establishes a technical coordinating committee to allow for appropriate oversight of the cleanup by the Port District and the Airport Authority;
- Creates an alternative dispute resolution mechanism that provides for arbitration of cleanup-related disputes among the parties by a third party neutral; and
- Maintains the jurisdiction of the federal court to enforce the agreement and any decisions of the selected arbitrator.
The settlement has been submitted by motion to the court for approval. A hearing on the approval motion is set for April 17, 2007.
The Port District was represented in this matter by Kevin Haroff, a partner in Sonnenschein’s Environmental Practice Group in San Francisco, and other members of the Firm’s Environmental and Litigation Practices, including Matthew Adams and Jessica Woelfel. Sonnenschein’s Environmental Practice Group includes more than 25 lawyers, in all our offices, and represents clients across the country in a wide array of environmental matters. Our practice encompasses adjudicative proceedings (from administrative proceedings to and through the federal Courts of Appeals), corporate and real estate transactions, (from multinational transactions to single facility transfers), and counseling on the avoidance or minimization of environmental liability.
With over 700 attorneys and other professionals in eleven U.S. offices and Brussels, and a global reach throughout Europe, Asia and Latin America, Sonnenschein serves many of the world’s largest and best-known businesses, nonprofit organizations and individuals. Founded in 1906, the firm is a leader in innovative legal services, serving its clients through integrated, inter-office cooperation and teamwork among practice groups to provide efficient, effective and timely legal services and business counseling.
For more information about the subject of this news release or Sonnenschein’s Environmental Practice Group generally, please contact Kevin Haroff in San Francisco at (415) 882-5000 (kharoff@sonnenschein.com).
