Opinion ID: 2537041
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: Failure to Contain/Remediate

Text: Plaintiffs alternatively argue that the defendants' failure to participate in and/or cooperate with LDEQ's efforts to contain/remediate the migrating gasoline before it reached plaintiffs' property is an act of negligence separate and apart from the failure to prevent the leak in the first place and that knowledge of that negligence was not communicated in the LDEQ letters. This argument is without merit because the 2001 and 2002 letters from LDEQ provided constructive knowledge of damage to plaintiffs' immovable property sufficient to commence the running of prescription based on LSA-C.C. art. 3493, regardless of whether that damage resulted from the failure to prevent the storage tanks from leaking or the failure to contain/remediate the leakage before it reached plaintiffs' property. As explained by this court in Crump, the breach of a duty to right an initial wrong simply cannot be a continuing wrong that suspends the running of prescription, as that is the purpose of every lawsuit and the obligation of every tortfeasor. Crump, 98-2326 at 10, 737 So.2d at 729. It was not the failure to contain/remediate that initially caused plaintiffs' damages, but the leaking underground storage tanks. Consequently, the defendants' failure to contain/remediate the leak did not suspend the running of prescription.