Opinion ID: 1036612
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Spill Act Claims

Text: Like CERCLA, the Spill Act permits courts to “allocate the costs of cleanup and removal among liable parties using such equitable factors as the court determines are appropriate.” N.J. Stat. Ann. § 58:10-23.11f(a)(2)(a). The District Court determined that both the Litgo Appellants and the Sanzari Appellees were liable under the Spill Act for response costs incurred for petroleum-related soil contamination. Based on the same factors considered for 45 CERCLA cost allocation, it allocated 67% of the costs to the Litgo Appellants and 33% of the costs to the Sanzari Appellees. The Sanzari Appellees argue that the District Court erred in assigning them liability under the Spill Act because they did not own or transport any of the hazardous materials stored in the JANR warehouse, nor did they exercise control over the warehouse at the time of NJDEP’s botched cleanup in the 1980s. We disagree. Under the Spill Act, if a party owns property at the time of a discharge, they are responsible for that discharge. See N.J. Dep’t of Envtl. Prot. v. Dimant, 51 A.3d 816, 829–30 (N.J. 2012) (citing Marsh v. N.J. Dep’t of Envtl. Prot., 703 A.2d 927, 931 (N.J. 1997)); see also N.J. Admin. Code § 7:1E-1.6 (defining “person responsible for a discharge” to include “[e]ach owner or operator of any facility, vehicle or vessel from which a discharge has occurred”). For liability to attach, the plaintiff must also show that there was a “reasonable nexus” between the discharge of waste for which the defendant is responsible and the contamination on the site. Dimant, 51 A.3d at 832–33, 835 (holding that there was an insufficient nexus between the discharge caused by the defendant and the contamination at the site when there was no evidence connecting fluid leaking onto a paved driveway with any of the complained-of contamination found in residential wells). Here, the Sanzari Appellees were the owners of the Litgo Property when hazardous waste was stored at the JANR warehouse, and when NJDEP disposed of that hazardous waste improperly. Because evidence presented at trial connected the JANR warehouse discharge to the contamination at the Litgo Property, the District Court did not err in concluding that the Sanzari Appellees were liable under 46 the Spill Act. Nor did the District Court err in allocating Spill Act costs, for the same reasons we discussed regarding the CERCLA cost allocation.