United States Ninth Circuit

In an appeal from the denial of a motion to intervene in an action filed by the EPA under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA), the order is reversed where, under CERCLA, a non-settling potentially responsible party (PRP) may intervene in litigation to oppose a consent decree incorporating a settlement that, if approved, would bar contribution from the settling PRP.

Appellate Information

• Argued 10/05/2009
• Decided 06/02/2010
• Published 06/02/2010

Judges

• Before CYNTHIA HOLCOMB HALL, WILLIAM A. FLETCHER and RICHARD R. CLIFTON, Circuit Judges.

Court

• United States Ninth Circuit

Counsel

• For Appellant:
  
• James Carlyle MacDonald, Thomas Jay Bois, II, Bois & MacDonald, Irvine, CA, Bradley L. Bunch, Law Offices of McCollum & Bunch, Fresno, CA, Stephen Robert Onstot, Walsworth Franklin Bevins & McCall, Los Angeles, CA, Stephen Arthur Tuggy, Locke Lord Bissell & Liddell, Los Angeles, CA, Lawrence Allen Hobel, Covington & Burling, San Francisco, CA, for intervenors-appellants.


• For Appellees:
  
• M. Alice Thurston, Lisa Elizabeth Jones, U.S. Department of Justice, Washington, D.C., Elizabeth Ann Rushton, Office of the California Attorney General, Los Angeles, CA, for plaintiffs-appellees., Brian Donald Langa, Demetriou, Del Guercio, Springer & Francis, Los Angeles, CA, Catherine Mitchell Wieman, Peter A. Nyquist, Alston & Bird, Los Angeles, CA, Robert Stephen Niemann, Seyfarth Shaw, San Francisco, CA, Carla Margolis Blanc, Southern California Edison Company, Rosemead, CA, for defendants-appellees.