California Court of Appeal

In mass tort litigation arises out of an environmental investigation which revealed that soil beneath a housing tract in Carson, California, was contaminated with residual petroleum hydrocarbons, the trial court's approval of the good faith settlements without first calculating the monetary value of Shell's obligation to comply with a cleanup and abatement order of the California Regional Water Quality Control Board (Water Board) to implement a Remedial Action Plan (RAP) is affirmed and the writ to show cause is denied where: 1) Shell's compliance with the RAP, which was mandated by the Water Board pursuant to the state's police powers, was not part of the settlement consideration, and therefore should not be included in the valuation of the good faith settlement; and 2) the determination of good faith settlement did not require an allocation of the $90 million settlement consideration among the 1,491 individual Plaintiffs and between their economic and noneconomic damage.

Appellate Information

• Published 2015/12/01

Judges

• EDMON

Court

• California Court of Appeal

Counsel