Opinion ID: 4458383
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: the amended consent order extinguished

Text: CRANBURY BRICK YARD’S COST-RECOVERY CLAIM A. Cranbury Brick Yard has contribution-claim immunity, so it cannot bring a cost-recovery claim The text of the amended Consent Order is clear. It did four things: • Substitution: The amendment “remove[d]” Cranbury Development and “replace[d]” it with Cranbury Brick Yard as a party to the whole Consent Order. App. 159. • Incorporation: The amendment “bec[a]me part of” the original Consent Order, which “remain[ed] in full force and effect” and was attached to the amendment. App. 160. • Settlement: The amendment recognized Cranbury Brick Yard’s potential “liab[ility] to the State of New Jersey under CERCLA” and “resolve[d]” it in exchange for Cranbury Brick Yard assuming “responsib[ility] for remediation of the Site.” App. 161, 170. • Immunity: The amendment “constitute[d] an administrative settlement within the meaning of CERCLA.” App. 170. It explicitly recognized Cranbury Brick Yard’s contribution-claim immunity under § 9613(f)(2). Id. And it gave Cranbury Brick Yard “the right to seek contribution” from other polluters under § 9613(f)(3)(B). Id. 13 The effect of its language is also clear. Because the amended Consent Order gave Cranbury Brick Yard immunity from contribution claims, it barred Cranbury Brick Yard from seeking cost recovery from other potentially responsible parties. Agere Sys., 602 F.3d at 229. So the District Court rightly granted summary judgment for the government, cutting off Cranbury Brick Yard’s cost-recovery claim. B. Cranbury Brick Yard’s counterarguments lack merit Despite this language, Cranbury Brick Yard argues that it still has a viable cost-recovery claim. It does not. 1. The voluntariness of the cleanup is no defense. Cranbury Brick Yard first contends that a party who “voluntarily cleans up a contaminated site and incurs its own response costs” must be able to seek cost recovery. Appellant’s Br. 29. Not so. Agere Systems’s bar on cost-recovery claims applies as long as a settlement makes that party immune from contribution claims. 602 F.3d at 229. Voluntariness is irrelevant. In any event, Cranbury Brick Yard’s cleanup costs were not fully voluntary. True, it joined the amended Consent Order freely. But after that, the agreement required it to clean up the site. 2. Cranbury Brick Yard benefited from settling its potential liability. Next, Cranbury Brick Yard claims that the amended Consent Order is not a settlement under § 9613(f)(2). It argues that it had no liability to settle and thus did not have to negotiate a settlement. Appellant’s Br. 31, 33–35. 14 But Cranbury Brick Yard had at least two reasons to settle. First, it did have something to settle: its potential liability as the site’s current owner. See 42 U.S.C. § 9607(a)(1). Second, the settlement gave Cranbury Brick Yard valuable immunity from contribution claims. Id. § 9613(f)(2). Indeed, that immunity proved useful when Cranbury Brick Yard pleaded it as an affirmative defense to the government’s contribution counterclaim. Cranbury Brick Yard was correct then and is mistaken now. Cranbury Brick Yard also argues that the District Court “incorrectly assumed” that the parties intended to extend Cranbury Development’s and Maxxam’s settlement to Cranbury Brick Yard. Appellant’s Br. 33. But the Court never “assumed” the parties’ intent—it knew their intent from the unambiguous text of the amended agreement. 3. Cranbury Brick Yard’s other agreements are irrelevant. The text of the amended Consent Order is clear. Thus, we reject Cranbury Brick Yard’s resort to parol evidence. In any event, this evidence is unconvincing. In a separate Purchase and Sale Agreement for the site, Cranbury Brick Yard agreed to assume only Cranbury Development’s “obligations” under the Consent Order. App. 324. But “obligation” includes “anything that a person is bound to do or forbear from doing.” Obligation, Black’s Law Dictionary 1292 (11th ed. 2019). So that agreement tracks the amended Consent Order: both require that Cranbury Brick Yard assume the benefits and burdens of the original Consent Order. 15 4. A different oversight document would have sufficed. Cranbury Brick Yard also claims that it had to join the Consent Order because New Jersey regulations then in effect required an “applicable oversight document” before it could clean up the site. Appellant’s Br. 32 (quoting N.J. Admin. Code § 7:26C-1.1 (2006)). But it concedes that the amended Consent Order was just “[o]ne such oversight document.” Id. It could have signed any other agreement that “define[d] the role of [the company] participating in the remediation of a contaminated site.” See N.J. Admin. Code § 7:26C-1.3 (2006) (definition of “[o]versight document”). It did not. Instead, it joined the amended Consent Order, which gave it contribution-claim immunity. And doing so extinguished its cost-recovery claim. 5. Cranbury Brick Yard forfeited its argument about the federal government’s model order. Finally, Cranbury Brick Yard claims that a “model” consent order written by two federal agencies supports its cost-recovery claim. But Cranbury Brick Yard forfeited this argument by failing to make it in the District Court. We see no exceptional circumstances that might cause us to overlook this forfeiture. In any event, this “model” was issued nearly a year after Cranbury Brick Yard joined the amended Consent Order. So while it might provide guidance to the next company in Cranbury Brick Yard’s situation, it casts no light on how we should read this Consent Order.