New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection v. Occidental Chemical Corp., — N.J. Super. – (App. Div. 2012)
Practice Areas: Environmental & Toxic Tort Litigation
In this environmental clean-up case, the Appellate Division of Superior Court granted leave to file an interlocutory appeal and held that a responsible party for pollution may seek contribution from other alleged responsible parties under the New Jersey Spill Act, even though they have not “first performed a clean up” of hazardous wastes. The Court declared that to rule otherwise would “frustrate the underlying intent of the Act”to encourage the fair sharing of the burdens of clean-up in the State of New Jersey.