Environmental Contamination Liability

Environmental pollution gives rise to three general areas of liability:

• Removal expenses
• Damages
• Punitive damages

The company or other entity that creates the environmental contamination may be liable for any of these obligations.

How Much Do Removals Cost?

Removal costs are the expenses businesses, individuals, and the federal, state, and tribal governments incur to remove environmental toxins. Depending on the degree of damage, the kind of contamination, and the severity of the damage, these expenses might vary greatly.

For instance, a shipwreck that causes a crude oil spill will probably be quite expensive, whereas a vehicle carrying gasoline will be much simpler to clean up and consequently less expensive to remove.

What Do Damages Mean?

When environmental pollution is involved, damages refer to the impact the contamination has on the value of the land. These may consist of:

• Destruction of the environment
• Financial setbacks for landowners
• Utilization of natural resources is reduced.
• Net reduction in land taxes
• Lost revenue
• A rise in the price of public services
• Cost of health consequences and related research
• Fines

How Do Punitive Damages Work?

Punitive damages are additional charges that a court or jury imposes to punish a company or person for contaminating the environment. They may be considerably greater than the first damages judgment.

Who Is Responsible If a Business Pollutes the Environment?

Four parties may be jointly accountable under federal rules for clearing up environmental damage, such as a chemical spill:

• The person who is currently in charge of a facility or vessel
• When disposing of any hazardous material, the owner or operator of a vessel or facility
• The sources of any dangerous compounds produced on the property
• Any transporter of dangerous goods to the destination the transporter chose

Can Certain Parties Contract Their Liability?

It is feasible to make agreements regarding culpability, but it is not possible to completely escape responsibility through a contract. In other words, responsibility should be divided so that one side pays for cleaning, but no party should be fully exempt from responsibility because of a contract. Any contamination that is later shown to exist may result in liability being applied retroactively.

What Defenses Exist Against Environmental Liability?

The following are valid defenses:

• Natural calamities or supernatural events
• Act of a third party
• Act of war

How Is It Possible to Establish a Third-Party Act?

In extremely few instances will this justification be accepted. This is intended to safeguard innocent landowners, but only if they conducted a reasonable inquiry about the property and had no reason to suspect the presence of dangerous materials.

Additional Causes of Action May Be Created by Statutes

Additional environmental laws may also grant some citizens new rights and, if those rights are violated, new grounds of action, in addition to these conventional forms of civil litigation.

The Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), for instance, allows people to file lawsuits for injunctive relief when a company manages the hazardous waste in a way that endangers both human health and the environment.

The Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA), which enables those who incur expenses for cleaning up environmental contamination to sue the guilty parties for payment, is still another illustration.

Is it Legal to Sue for Environmental Damage?

Numerous kinds of environmental problems have been successfully addressed through civil law remedies. Trespass, nuisance, carelessness, and strict liability are the four conventional categories of environmental legal lawsuits.

Trespassing

Trespassing is the act of physically entering someone else’s property without permission and interfering with the owner’s exclusive possession rights. Although invasion by an object is not always involved in trespass claims, it sometimes is. When defendants allow harmful substances, such as ash, sewage, or rubbish, to enter the property of others, courts have deemed them accountable for trespass.

An injunction to prevent the trespass from continuing and, if applicable, monetary damages for the loss in the property’s market value or to pay for remediation costs are possible legal remedies for environmental trespass.

Nuisance

The term “nuisance” refers to the unreasonable use of property that interferes with others’ enjoyment of their own property. Some examples are offensive smells, jarring sounds, smoke, dust, and vibrations.

Trespassing only requires one piece of property; a nuisance requires two or more: the property creating the nuisance and the property (or properties) being harmed. Additionally, unlike trespass, nuisance does not call for a physical intrusion; rather, merely interfering with enjoyment qualifies as a nuisance.

An injunction is frequently used as a nuisance remedy. The defendant must change his actions in order to stop hurting nearby property owners before he can utilize his land again. However, in rare instances, courts have chosen to forego the injunctive remedy in favor of awarding damages that fully compensate the plaintiff for all economic losses brought on by the nuisance.

An injunction is a superior remedy if the lawsuit’s main objective is to stop environmental harm. The defendant is encouraged to find a less detrimental method to use his property via an injunction. A damages judgment essentially gives the defendant permission to pay the plaintiff and destroy the environment.

Negligence

A lot of different types of personal and property injuries can be compensated for through the use of negligence as a legal claim. Negligence is the failure to take reasonable precautions to reduce foreseeable risks to others.
It is legal to hold someone accountable when their negligence results in physical or financial harm. In environmental negligence proceedings, the defendant frequently releases toxins unintentionally into the environment.

A negligence action is available for accidental harm, providing the harm was foreseeable, and the defendant acted negligently, unlike trespass and nuisance, which call for some knowledge or intent on the defendant’s part. Furthermore, negligence includes both personal injury and crimes against property. A plot of land is not required to be involved in a negligence action.

Environmental regulations may also be relevant in cases of negligence. The plaintiff wouldn’t need to provide any additional evidence to establish that the defendant violated his duty to exercise reasonable care if the defendant’s actions violated a law, rule, or regulation designed to prevent the type of harm the defendant ultimately caused. This is known as negligence per se.

Damages are the proper legal response to negligence. Damages can be used to cover lost property value, clean-up expenses, or to make up for personal injuries.

Strict Liability

Strict liability refers to unusually risky behaviors that are permitted to continue because they are beneficial to society as a whole. Still, the law compels individuals who benefit from the activity to be held accountable for any harm it may cause. In essence, persons who participate in unusually risky behaviors are always responsible for any damage that results.

There is no way to make an activity fully safe, even when everyone involved takes reasonable precautions. This is known as an excessively dangerous activity. Toxic substance use, demolition and blasting operations, the storage of explosives, and radioactive emissions are a few examples.

Environmental Claims

A few further environmental law claims are:

• Interference with the exercise of a public right, such as access to a park, beach, or river, is referred to as a public nuisance. Government officials or those who have suffered special harm beyond what the general public experiences have the only legal standing to file a lawsuit because the harm is common to the public at large.
• Owners of riparian land are entitled to use the watercourse without significant interference, and they have the legal right to take action against anyone who harms the water’s quantity or quality.

Do I Need a Lawyer?

Even a huge corporation could go bankrupt due to the severe environmental damage liability. This highlights the importance of filing a lawsuit against a company that has mistreated your property.

A wise initial step to do to make sure you are reimbursed for your harm would be to speak with a government attorney. However, if you work for a corporation and believe you may be liable for environmental harm, you should consider contacting a lawyer right away.