Opinion ID: 2737139
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 8

Heading: Preemption of Common-Law Counterclaims

Text: Several defendants pleaded state-law counterclaims of negligence, strict liability, and creation of a public nuisance against NCR in response to its contribution action. The district court held that these counterclaims were preempted by CERCLA because they would effectively reapportion CERCLA costs in a manner contrary to CERCLA itself. On cross-appeal, the defendants challenge this ruling. 54 Nos. 13-2447 et al. State law is implicitly preempted when it “interferes with or is contrary to federal law.” Free v. Bland, 369 U.S. 663, 666 (1962). Such interference exists, among other circumstances, “where state law stands as an obstacle to the accomplishment and execution of the full purposes and objectives of Congress.” Freightliner Corp. v. Myrick, 514 U.S. 280, 287 (1995) (quoting Hines v. Davidowitz, 312 U.S. 52, 67 (1941)) (internal quotation marks omitted). We have already dealt with an argument almost exactly like the one in this case. See PMC, Inc. v. Sherwin-Williams Co., 151 F.3d 610 (7th Cir. 1998). There, the district court allowed PMC to collect contribution under Illinois’s contribution statute even though it was not available under CERCLA, and we reversed. PMC’s use of the state statute, we explained, was an attempt to evade CERCLA’s contribution mechanisms. Allowing state law to defeat the statute would “nullify the sanction that Congress had imposed for the kind of CERCLA violation that PMC committed.” Id. at 618. As for CERCLA’s savings clause stating that the statute does not “affect or modify in any way the obligations or liabilities of any person under other Federal or State law, including common law, with respect to releases of hazardous substances or other pollutants or contaminants,” 42 U.S.C. § 9652(d), we explained that this clause was meant to protect victims of toxic wastes, not joint tortfeasors against one another. PMC, Inc., 151 F.3d at 617. Like PMC, Glatfelter and WTM are not “victim[s] of toxic-waste contamination in any realistic sense.” Id. Their common-law theories all present the same theory of causation at bottom: NCR’s common-law torts caused the counterclaiming defendants to incur CERCLA liability, and thereNos. 13-2447 et al. 55 fore they are entitled to damages from NCR. But CERCLA was written to ensure that parties like the defendants would be liable so that someone would be available to pay for the environmental cleanup. The situation the defendants describe is the exact scenario that CERCLA § 113(f) is meant to cover, when “the less guilty of two tortfeasors” is trying to recover against the other. PMC, Inc., 151 F.3d at 618. We will not use state law effectively to undo CERCLA’s remedial design—a design meant to protect the environment, not parties that dumped hazardous waste for years. The two regimes cannot coexist while remaining faithful to Congress’s explicit purposes, and thus the common-law counterclaims must be preempted. The district court is affirmed on this point.