Opinion ID: 2680424
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Trust Fund Theory Under Federal Law

Text: We acknowledge at the outset that “CERCLA does not contain any provision that imposes liability directly upon the estates of [the] four classes of [potentially] responsible parties,” Witco Corp. v. Beekhuis, 38 F.3d 682, 689 (3d Cir. 1994), much less the beneficiaries of such estates. That cannot end the inquiry, however, because our precedents make clear that under some circumstances, the liability of potentially responsible parties may pass to certain of their successors‐in‐interest. For example, while “CERCLA does not specifically provide that a successor corporation may be held liable for response costs,” New York v. Nat’l Serv. Indus., Inc., 460 F.3d 201, 206 (2d Cir. 2006),we have held that CERCLA encompasses such successor liability, see id. Asarco contends that we should craft a rule of federal common law under CERCLA mandating that a decedent’s personal liability is transferred to those 17 who benefit from the decedent’s estate, a rule known as the “trust fund doctrine.” Appellant’s Br. 17; see W.R. Peele, Sr. Trust, 876 F. Supp. at 743. Such an approach, however, is foreclosed by our precedents. As we recently reiterated, “where federal statutory regulation is comprehensive and detailed, as CERCLA is, we presume that matters left unaddressed are left subject to the disposition provided by state law.” Price Trucking Corp., 748 F.3d at 84 (internal quotation marks omitted). Our decision in Marsh, 499 F.3d at 165, illustrates that principle. There, the State of New York appealed from an order dismissing its claims under CERCLA against the shareholder‐distributees of a dissolved Delaware corporation. The relevant provision of Delaware law established “a three‐year continuation period, beginning at dissolution, for dissolved corporations to wind up their affairs and for unknown claimants to assert claims against the corporation.” Id. at 170 (citing Del. Code Ann. tit. 8, § 278). The state asserted its claims “several years after [the corporation] had been dissolved, [and] outside the corporate wind‐up period” established by Delaware law. Id. at 169. In affirming the district court’s dismissal, we declined to create a rule of federal common law that would have displaced Delaware law regarding actions against dissolved 18 corporations, concluding that “CERCLA does not suggest that the entire corpus of state corporation law is to be replaced simply because a plaintiff’s cause of action is based upon a federal statute.” Id. at 180 (internal quotation marks omitted). The same conclusion necessarily obtains with respect to federal claims against decedents’ estates, which, by longstanding precedent, are governed by state probate law and procedures, unless federal law specifically provides otherwise. See, e.g., Pufahl v. Parks’ Estate, 299 U.S. 217, 225 (1936); Forrest v. Jack, 294 U.S. 158, 162‐63 (1935). CERCLA gives no indication of any intention to displace state probate law, any more than it displaces state law regarding successor liability in the case of dissolved corporations. Accordingly, we agree with the district court’s rejection of Asarco’s argument that the Trustees may be held liable by application of a trust fund theory as a matter of federal law.