Supreme Court Will Consider Limiting Pollution Cleanup Suits
The Berkeley Pit, a former open pit copper mine and a part of a Superfund Site, is seen, in Butte, Montana May 25, 2006.
Photographer: Stephen Hilger/Bloomberg
This article is for subscribers only.
The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to use a Montana case involving a BP Plc unit to consider shielding companies from environmental cleanup lawsuits that go beyond what federal regulators have ordered.
The justices will review a Montana Supreme Court decision that allowed a suit by property owners whose land was contaminated by arsenic discharged decades ago from a copper smelter in the western part of the state. The landowners are suing BP’s Atlantic Richfield, which acquired the smelter’s operator, Anaconda Co., in 1977.