Court Opinion

ID: 9706010
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 01:29:42.883594+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:22:18.423234
License: Public Domain

R.S. Smith, J. (dissenting).
I dissent from the Court’s holding *725that Speonk was a “person who has discharged petroleum” within the meaning of Navigation Law § 181 (1), because I do not believe those words can describe a person who, like Speonk, had nothing whatever to do with causing petroleum to be discharged.
In State of New York v Green (96 NY2d 403 [2001]), we held that a landowner who could have prevented the discharge of petroleum, but did not, was a “person who has discharged petroleum” within the meaning of the statute. This was a broad interpretation of the language, but not an unreasonable one, in the context of a statute that imposes liability without fault.
But it is quite another thing to apply the words “person who has discharged petroleum” to a company in the position of Speonk, which had no interest in or control over either the real property or the petroleum storage system at the time the discharge occurred. While failing to prevent a petroleum discharge may in a sense be the equivalent of discharging petroleum, failure to clean up the discharge afterwards is not. If the Legislature had intended to impose liability for failure to clean up, it would have said so.
Chief Judge Kaye and Judges G.B. Smith, Ciparick, Rosenblatt, Graffeo and Read concur; Judge R.S. Smith dissents in an opinion.
Order affirmed, without costs, in a memorandum.