ELR Citation: ELR 21191
No(s). 89-3652 (GEB) (D.N.J. Mar 28, 1990)

The court enters a consent decree between the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and 116 defendants involving cleanup of the Lone Pine Landfill in Freehold Township, New Jersey, under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act. The decree requires that two groups of settling defendants participate in alternative dispute resolution to determine the exact share of their liability and that the remaining two groups pay a fixed amount based on their assessed volumetric share of the waste. The court holds that the decree is reasonable, adequate, and fair. The court's function is to determine the reasonableness of the settlement, and the scope of review does not allow for de novo examination of the liability allocation. Further, public policy and congressional intent favor settlement, because the consent decree provides that the settling parties will pay the cost of the cleanup, and settlement will conserve public enforcement resources. The decree is not unfair to nonsettling defendants in a related action, because it takes into account both volumetric share and toxicity in determining liability. An independent evaluation of the relative toxicity of the nonsettling defendants' waste is beyond the scope of the court's review. Concerns over nonsettling defendants' potential liability are speculative, because there is no finding of liability against them. EPA's practice of negotiating with representatives of the settling defendants and allowing the settling defendants to resolve the settlement details amongst themselves was not unfair to the nonsettling defendants, because negotiating with all the settling defendants was impractical, EPA met with the nonsettling defendants on several occasions, and the nonsettling defendants attended all the consent decree negotiations until they declined to join the settlement.

[A related decision is published at 20 ELR 21188.]

Counsel are listed at 20 ELR 21188.