Opinion ID: 2671515
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: McColl CERCLA Litigation

Text: Over 45 years later, in 1991, the United States and California brought a CERCLA action against the Oil Companies to recover the costs of cleaning up the McColl site. The district court held the Oil Companies, among other parties, were jointly and severally liable for the acid waste they dumped at the McColl site, United States v. Shell Oil Co. (Shell I), 841 F. Supp. 962, 976 (C.D. Cal. 1993), but then allocated 100% of the cleanup costs to the Government as an “arranger” of the disposal, United States v. Shell Oil Co. (Shell II), 13 F. Supp. 2d 1018, 1030 (C.D. Cal. 1998); see also 42 U.S.C. § 9607(a)(3) (1994) (extending CERCLA liability to “any person who by contract, agreement, or otherwise arranged for disposal or treatment, or arranged with a transporter for transport for disposal or treatment, of hazardous substances”). The Ninth Circuit affirmed the Oil Companies’ liability, but reversed the allocation to the United States, holding the United States was not an “arranger” for the non-benzol acid waste. United States v. Shell Oil Co. (Shell III), 294 F.3d 1045, 1056, 1058 (9th Cir. 2002) (“No court has imposed arranger liability on a party who never owned or possessed, and never had any authority to control or duty to dispose of, the hazardous materials at issue.”) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). Following remand, the district court transferred the Oil Companies’ breach of contract counterclaim to the Court of Federal Claims pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1631. The Oil Companies voluntarily dismissed the transferred 12 SHELL OIL COMPANY v. US Complaint without prejudice, exhausted their administrative remedies with the General Services Administration pursuant to the Contract Settlement Act of 1944 (“CSA”), Pub. L. No. 78-395, ch. 358, 58 Stat. 694 (1944) (codified at 41 U.S.C. § 113, et seq. (2006)), and filed a new Complaint in the Court of Federal Claims, seeking reimbursement for the CERCLA costs.