Gates v. Rohm & Haas Co.

248 F.R.D. 434, 2008 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 12847
CourtDistrict Court, E.D. Pennsylvania
DecidedFebruary 20, 2008
DocketCivil Action No. 06-1743
StatusPublished
Cited by17 cases

This text of 248 F.R.D. 434 (Gates v. Rohm & Haas Co.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, E.D. Pennsylvania primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Gates v. Rohm & Haas Co., 248 F.R.D. 434, 2008 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 12847 (E.D. Pa. 2008).

Opinion

MEMORANDUM AND ORDER

PRATTER, District Judge.

In this putative class action, Glenn and Donna Gates, on behalf of themselves and all others similarly situated as residents and property owners in McCullom Lake Village in Illinois, sued Rohm and Haas Company, Rohm and Haas Chemicals, LLC (collectively, “Rohm and Haas”), Morton International, Inc. and Modine Manufacturing Company1 pursuant to the Comprehensive Environmental Response Compensation and Liability Act of 1980 (“CERCLA”), 42 U.S.C. § 9601, et seq., and Illinois state law for damages allegedly resulting from contamination of their drinking water by pollutants allegedly generated and released by the Defendants.

After lengthy negotiations, the Plaintiff and Defendant Modine reached a proposed settlement, and now seek the Court’s preliminary approval of the proposed settlement agreement and the proposed form of notice to putative class members. The non-settling defendants, Rohm and Haas and Morton, object to certification of the proposed settlement classes, which are identical to the proposed litigation classes, prior to the Court’s decision regarding certification of the litigation classes.

Following a hearing on February 11, 2008 and upon review of the parties’ submissions and the governing law, the Court concludes preliminarily that the proposed settlement classes meet the requirements of Rule 23, and the proposed settlement is within the range of reasonableness. The Court also concludes that the notice provisions are consistent with the requirements of due process, Rule 23 and 28 U.S.C. § 1715. Accordingly, the Court wall grant preliminary approval to the proposed class, class representatives, class settlement and notice provisions.2

FACTUAL BACKGROUND

The Gateses and the proposed class members are residents and property owners in McCullom Lake Village, Illinois, a town of approximately 1000 people and just over 400 homes. (See McCullom Lake Village, Illinois Fact Sheet, American Factfinder, United States Census Bureau, available at http:// factfinder.census.gov (last visited 2/14/08)).

Rohm and Haas Company is an international specialty chemicals company; Morton International, Inc. is its wholly owned subsidiary. Until January 1, 2005, Morton operated a speciality chemicals manufacturing facility in Ringwood, Illinois (the “Rohm/Morton facility”), located directly north and allegedly [437]*437hydrologically3 and hydrogeologically4 “up gradient” from MeCullom Lake Village. As of January 1, 2005, Rohm and Haas Chemicals, LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Rohm and Haas, has been operating the Rohm/Morton Facility. Modine Manufacturing Company is an international manufacturer of heating and cooling technology. Since 1961 Modine has operated a manufacturing facility in Ringwood, Illinois (the “Modine Facility”), located directly north and allegedly hydrologically and hydrogeologically “up gradient” from MeCullom Lake Village.

The Gateses allege that both facilities discharged into a landfill waste water containing chemicals that degraded to form vinyl chloride, a carcinogen. Water containing the vinyl chloride allegedly flowed underground in two “plumes”: a shallow plume that emptied into a marshy area southeast of the Rohm/Morton facility and more than a mile north of MeCullom Lake Village, and a deeper plume that flowed through an alleged underground channel into the eastern part of MeCullom Lake Village, where it contaminated certain Village drinking wells.

Between 1968 and 2002, vinyl chloride allegedly evaporating from the shallow plume blew over the Village, causing some Village residents to breathe varying amounts of it. Between 1978 and 2002, vinyl chloride in Village wells above the deeper plume allegedly mixed with the air in some Village houses when the well water was used for household purposes, and residents of those houses breathed it. Breathing the vinyl chloride allegedly placed Village residents at risk of contracting brain cancer, and the contamination had an adverse impact on the value of all real estate in the Village as of April 2006 (when this suit was filed). Consequently, the Plaintiffs, on behalf of themselves and other Village residents, seek funding for medical monitoring to detect brain cancer, as well as damages for the diminution in value of their properties.

The Plaintiffs concede, however, that to date, the Plaintiffs “have not identified any link between Modine and the alleged contamination of ground water referenced in the Complaint.” (Joint Motion at ¶ 3.) They also concede that “Modine was, at most, only a relatively small contributor to the alleged contamination of air asserted in the Complaint.” (Id.)

THE PROPOSED PARTIAL SETTLEMENT

Following two full days of mediation with a former federal magistrate judge and extensive negotiations, the Plaintiffs and Modine reached a settlement resolving this matter as between those parties only. The proposed Settlement Agreement provides for the payment of up to $2,000,000, allocated between two different proposed settlement classes. The proposed settlement classes consist of a Medical Monitoring Settlement Class and a Property Damage Settlement Class.

The “Medical Monitoring Settlement Class” is defined to include all persons who lived for one year or more in total (whether consecutively or not) within MeCullom Lake Village during the time period from January 1, 1968 to December 31, 2002. The “Property Damage Settlement Class” is defined to include all persons who have held an ownership interest in real property within McCul-lom Lake Village at any time between April 25, 2006 (the date of the filing of the Com: plaint) to January 18, 2008 (the date the Settlement Agreement was executed). Excluded from both classes are individuals for whom a brain tumor has been detected prior to January 18, 2008 (the date of the Settlement Agreement) and individuals who as of January 18, 2008 have already filed personal injury claims arising out of exposure to chlorinated solvents.

Pursuant to the Settlement Agreement, the funds are to be allocated as follows:

(i) A fund of $1,400,000 for payments to Medical Monitoring Settlement Class claimants, allowing for reimbursement [438]*438of up to $1,400 for any Medical Monitoring Settlement Class member to obtain an MRI or other appropriate screening or test;
(ii) A fund of $100,000 for payments to Property Damage Settlement Class claimants, allowing for a maximum payment of $1,000 per property (to be shared pro rata if there are multiple claimants to a single property);
(iii) Up to $500,000 for Court-approved attorneys’ fees and all settlement administration costs, including the costs of a Claims Administrator and notice costs related to the Settlement.

The amounts awarded to claimants for medical monitoring and property damages are to be increased or decreased pro rata, depending upon the number of claimants. Thus, it will be impossible to discern the exact amount each class member will receive until the final approval hearing, at which time the deadline for the submission of claims will have passed.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
248 F.R.D. 434, 2008 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 12847, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/gates-v-rohm-haas-co-paed-2008.