Opinion ID: 1881610
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Comfort Settlement and Double Recovery

Text: Monsanto argues that the settlement in Comfort v. Kimberly-Clark Corp. (No. CV-90-616, Shelby Circuit Court) extinguished any claims based on PCB contamination of Lay Lake. Comfort involved the same plaintiffs, but consisted of allegations of environmental pollution directed at Kimberly Clark-Corporation. Although the plaintiff class in Comfort and the putative class in the present action are identical, the gravamen of the complaint, the injuries complained of, and the defendants are distinct. In Comfort, the plaintiffs alleged that a paper mill owned and operated by Kimberly-Clark released dioxins, specifically all cogeners of dibenzo-p-dioxin and dibenzzofuran, including, without limitation, 2,3,7,8-Tetrachlorodibenzo-p-diox-in, into Lay Lake. A settlement was submitted to the trial court on July 26, 1993, releasing Kimberly-Clark from all liability relating to its chemical discharges into Lay Lake. In the settlement agreement, Kimberly-Clark denied all of the material allegations of the complaint. The basis of Monsanto's defense, that the present action is barred by the legal doctrine that prohibits a double recovery, arises from information submitted by the Comfort plaintiffs in response to a pretrial case-management order, where they listed the chemicals that were to be the basis of their action, one of which was PCBs. The trial court in the present action entered a summary judgment in favor of Monsanto as to claims for any damages accruing before July 26, 1993, the date of the Comfort settlement. Payton contends that there is no evidence of damages as a result of PCB contamination until the posting of the fish advisory in 1997, well after the settlement of the case against Kimberly-Clark, a case in which there was no competent evidence of damage to any of the plaintiffs therein by PCBs. Because this contention is inconsistent with any claim for damages based on events occurring before the date of the Comfort settlement, we pretermit further consideration of the summary judgment in favor of Monsanto on its defense to the claims for damages allegedly sustained before the settlement in Comfort, and we affirm the trial court's partial summary judgment in favor of Monsanto as to any damages occurring before the settlement of the Comfort litigation.