Federal judge upholds $48 million award for Pomona in water pollution case – Daily Bulletin

A federal court docket decide final week dismissed an enchantment by a overseas company claimed to be chargeable for contaminating the town of Pomona with groundwater with a poisonous chemical in decision given by a jury in September 2021.

On January 27, 2022, U.S. District Court docket Choose R. Gary Klausner denied the request for a brand new trial filed by the defendant, an American department of Sociedad Quimica y Minera de Chile, often known as SQM America North Inc.

Furthermore, Klausner dominated that the $ 48 million in damages awarded by a jury was not extreme and needed to be paid.

“We’re happy with the choice of Choose Klausner. It’s time for the corporate that brought on the air pollution to pay to wash up the mess it made, ”mentioned Ken Sansone, of SL Setting Regulation Group, who represented Pomona in court docket, in a ready assertion.

On September 7, 2021, after greater than 10 years and three trials, the town received the lawsuit towards SQM America North. The case, which started in 2011, turned between courts till the town received after presenting its full argument to the U.S. District Court docket in Los Angeles.

SQM should still enchantment the choice, however has not but executed so, Sansone mentioned in an interview Monday, Jan. 31. “We consider the choice was appropriate and was supported by proof and the regulation,” he mentioned.

The jury discovered that fertilizers despatched from the Atacama Desert of Chile within the Nineteen Thirties and Nineteen Forties and combined into the fertile soil of Pomona by citrus farmers contained sodium nitrate, a standard ingredient, but in addition perchlorates, a chemical that causes thyroid injury and causes havoc. hormones essential in excessive doses and will intervene with childhood improvement.

When the state declared perchlorate a pollutant and set a most degree of 6 components per billion in 2007, Pomona needed to shut 14 wells, which pumped perchlorate-contaminated water from the aquifer, a part of the Chino water basin. It spent $ 8.5 million on the design and development of therapy crops. That doesn’t embrace the price of working, wrote James Makshanoff, Pomona metropolis supervisor, in a latest e-mail.

SQM lawyer Bob Smith, with San Diego-based regulation agency Lewis Brisbois Bisgaard & Smith, had mentioned after one of the trials in 2018 that the corporate’s product was not faulty and the mining firm did nothing incorrect. The corporate mentioned it shouldn’t be held chargeable for the dangers unknown to them within the Nineteen Thirties and Nineteen Forties as a result of that will be compliance with future water high quality requirements.

However the federal court docket jury disagreed and awarded the town damages.

“Town of Pomona must be counseled for preventing for greater than a decade to make sure that polluters, not Pomona taxpayers, pay to wash perchlorate in ingesting water and that Pomona residents have clear and wholesome water. to drink. “, Wrote Sansone.

Town has not but acquired the test from SQM. Sansone hopes this may mark the tip of a protracted and protracted affair and that the corporate has the means to pay the judgment.

Federal decide upholds $48 million award for Pomona in water air pollution case – Each day Bulletin Source link Federal decide upholds $48 million award for Pomona in water air pollution case – Each day Bulletin