The court of appeals affirmed a district court judgment. The court held that §113(f)(1) of the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) did not provide district courts with authority to bar contribution claims of persons who neither had notice nor participated in an action resolved by court-approved settlement.
The Sherwin-Williams Company moved to enforce a 2001 court-approved settlement which it negotiated with the City of Emeryville and the Emeryville Redevelopment Agency (Emeryville) to resolve a lawsuit filed by Emeryville in 1999 in the Northern District of California pursuant to the CERCLA statute. That suit (the Site A litigation) sought to recover clean-up costs as to a parcel (Site A) where Sherwin-Williams manufactured, stored, and distributed pesticides from the 1920s through the 1960s. Under the terms of the 2001 Settlement, Sherwin-Williams paid Emeryville $6.5 million for Site A clean-up, and agreed to a cost-sharing formula for future groundwater remediation.
