A friend of mine has a 15-year-old daughter who is beseeching her parents to commit to going zero-waste.

That is, to produce no trash, instead composting, recycling and re-using everything.

It's a laudable example of conscientious youth until you start thinking about the logistics: What are you supposed to do for shampoo? Deodorant? Do you have time to make your own hummus and cream cheese and yogurt and everything else that's normally sold in plastic containers or wrapped in plastic (i.e. everything)?

Suffice to say, zero waste isn't easy.

As for the rest of us trash-producing mortals, we still need landfills. Which is why I don't have much sympathy for a growing number of plaintiffs around the country attempting to bring public nuisance class actions against landfills because—as garbage is want to do—the sites stink.

Last week, litigators from Beveridge & Diamond racked up five defense wins on behalf of landfills in Pennsylvania and Louisiana that were hit with public nuisance suits for emitting noxious odors.

Beveridge principal James Slaughter said the jump in landfill suits may have been triggered by successful public nuisance cases against smelly hog farms. In April of 2018, for example, neighbors near a 15,000 acre hog farm in North Carolina won a $50 million jury verdict against Smithfield Foods.

Two months later, another North Carolina jury awarded $25 million in a similar public nuisance case against Smithfield.

But landfills are “very different facilities,” Slaughter said. “They're a critical part of the public infrastructure. They're stationary. They tend to exist in the same location for many decades. It's a very different set of facts and legal circumstances, especially given how heavily they're regulated at the federal and state level.”

The plaintiffs who sued Bethlehem Landfill Co. in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania on behalf of 8,400 homeowners, for example, did acknowledge that decomposing garbage “inherently generates odors.”

But in their complaint filed in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, they asserted that more could be done to minimize the stench, and that they were entitled to compensatory and punitive damages, plus injunctive relief so that odors “no longer invade plaintiffs' property.”

But U.S. District Judge Chad Kenney last week dismissed the suit, ruling that the homeowners failed to state a viable claim for a public or private nuisance, nor could they show that the landfill was negligent.

Yes, he noted, an improperly maintained, extra-stinky landfill could be considered a public nuisance. But Kenney wrote that the plaintiffs “fail to allege a private action for this public nuisance because they do not show how their injury is over and above the injury suffered by public generally.”

The landfill is permitted and regulated by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, which over the years has periodically cracked down on the facility when it hasn't toed the line. It's already got an active overseer to make sure it's following the law.

“Plaintiffs seem to assume that, because they have alleged that their property is filled with odors from defendant landfill, they suffer an injury of greater magnitude as compared to the 'general public,'” the judge continued. “Plaintiffs' proximity alone, which again would necessarily require that thousands of other households also have a special harm, does not demonstrate how plaintiffs are uniquely harmed by defendant landfill over and above the general public.”

In other words, too bad.

Moreover, he ruled that the negligence claim failed because the plaintiffs could not identify a duty by the landfill to prevent offsite odors.

In addition to Slaughter, the Beveridge team also included partners Megan Brillault and Michael Murphy, plus John Paul, Nicole Weinstein and Roy Prather. Robert Donchez of Florio Perrucci Steinhardt & Cappelli was local counsel in Pennsylvania. 

The landowners were represented by Kevin Riechelson of Kamensky, Cohen & Riechelson in Trenton, New Jersey, who did not respond to a request for comment.