Opinion ID: 795431
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: CERCLA's Legislative History

Text: 70 We begin, then, with the legislative history of CERCLA. 23 Although the statute is supposed to be comprehensive, the legislative history is not, as many of the pre-SARA cases that allowed an implied right of action under § 107 observed. See, e.g., Walls, 761 F.2d at 318 ([T]he legislative history of CERCLA is vague, reflecting the compromise nature of the legislation eventually enacted.); NCC, 642 F.Supp. at 1263 (noting the absence of significant legislative history of CERCLA); see also Frank P. Grad, A Legislative History of the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability (Superfund) Act of 1980, 8 Colum. J. Envtl. L. 1, 2 (1982) (In the instance of the `Superfund' legislation, a hastily assembled bill and a fragmented legislative history add to the usual difficulty of discerning the full meaning of the law.). 71 Though without doubt CERCLA's drafters intended that the statute encourage responsible parties to clean up hazardous waste sites and bear the costs of doing so, see Morton Int'l, 343 F.3d at 676, Congress' position on voluntary cleanups is less clear. Reporting on the proposed Hazardous Waste Containment Act (the House of Representatives' version of CERCLA, see Grad, supra, at 4-5), 24 the House Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce noted that the bill would establish a Federal cause of action in strict liability to enable the [EPA] administrator to pursue rapid recovery of the costs incurred for the costs of such [cleanup] actions undertaken by him from persons liable therefor and to induce such persons voluntarily to pursue appropriate environmental response actions with respect to inactive hazardous waste sites. H.R. Rep. No. 96-1016(I), at 17 (1980), reprinted in 1980 U.S.C.C.A.N. 6119, 6120. Representative Florio, the floor manager of the legislation in the House, noted that [t]he strong liability provisions that are in our bill ... are very important, because we want to induce those who know where these sites are to remedy the sites themselves. If there is no liability provision, they will not have any incentive whatsoever to go forward on a voluntary basis and clean up those sites. 126 Cong. Rec. H9441 (daily ed. Sept. 23, 1980); see also id. at H9467 (statement of Rep. Florio) (EPA is required not to act if the responsible party or parties will take appropriate action to clean[ ]up and contain these sites.). 72 These statements do not, however, establish that Congress necessarily intended that PRPs engaged in voluntary cleanups be able to seek contribution; they could just as easily reflect congressional recognition that a strong enforcement scheme holding wrongdoers liable would encourage PRPs to head off potentially ruinous litigation or punitive settlements and clean up their own mess. 25 Indeed, Congress provided no express right of contribution for any PRP that incurred response costs, whether voluntarily or not. Language providing an express cause of action for contribution among PRPs was rejected by Congress, see NCC, 642 F.Supp. at 1263, as was language providing for joint and several liability, see, e.g., 126 Cong. Rec. S14,964 (daily ed. Nov. 24, 1980) (statement of Sen. Randolph) (It is intended that issues of liability not resolved by this act, if any, shall be governed by traditional and evolving principles of common law. An example is joint and several liability. Any reference to these terms has been deleted, and the liability of joint tort feasors will be determined under common or previous statutory law.); 126 Cong. Rec. H11,787 (daily ed. Dec. 3, 1980) (statement of Rep. Florio) (same). 73 While it is clear that CERCLA's drafters intended common law principles to govern liability, we have not found evidence in the legislative history that Congress contemplated this would extend a contribution right to PRPs engaged in entirely voluntary cleanups. In fact, the House and Senate floor managers' statements that liability would be governed by common law principles appear inconsistent with this possibility, since contribution among jointly and severally liable tortfeasors ordinarily follows a determination of liability to a common plaintiff who suffered an injury. See, e.g., Restatement (Second) of Torts §§ 875, 886A (1979); 2 Michael Dore, Law of Toxic Torts § 16.04 (1999) (In general, contribution is available whenever a party is held liable to a plaintiff for injuries [for] which other parties were at least partially responsible.); see also Northwest Airlines, 451 U.S. at 86-88, 101 S.Ct. 1571 (noting that, in most American jurisdictions, ... a right to contribution is recognized when two or more persons are liable to the same plaintiff for the same injury and one of the joint tortfeasors has paid more than his fair share of the common liability). As then-Representative Gore explained to the House of Representatives in offering an amendment to the Hazardous Waste Containment Act, 74 Joint and several liability ordinarily would mean that whenever a single, indivisible harm is sustained as a result of independent, separate, but concurring tortious acts by two or more actors, each can be held liable for the entire amount of damages incurred.... The plaintiff could collect the total sum of damages awarded from a single defendant and could avoid the agony of multiple suits against the defendants that would otherwise be necessary to achieve full compensation. 75 Under the theory of contribution, the defendant from whom the plaintiff receives payment may then collect from the other defendants for that part of the damages for which each is responsible.... [C]ourts [have] concluded that because the defendants were the ones at fault, it would be unfair to place the burden of demonstrating the apportionability of the damage on the plaintiff. The burden was thus placed on the defendants to work out for themselves who was responsible for what part of the injury under the process of contribution [after the plaintiff recovered his damages]. 76 126 Cong. Rec. H9463 (daily ed. Sept. 23, 1980). 77