United States v. Bestfoods - Significance, Don't Drink The Water, Shifting The Burden To The Responsible Parties, A Question Of Parenthood

United States v. Bestfoods - Significance

United States v. Bestfoods - Further Readings

United States v. Bestfoods - Don't Drink The Water

In 1957, Ott Chemical Company, which manufactured products for the pharmaceutical, veterinary, and agricultural industries, began operation of a plant in a rural area near Muskegon, in western Michigan. Founder Arnold Ott served as president and principal shareholder. Eight years later, in 1965, CPC International incorporated the Ott Chemical Company as a subsidiary. Thus, there were three entitie…

United States v. Bestfoods - Shifting The Burden To The Responsible Parties

Attempting to remedy the situation at the Muskegon factory, MDNR began looking for a corporation that would purchase the site and help pay for its cleanup. Naturally, given the situation, the state was not inundated with offers, but finally in late 1977, it found Aerojet-General Corporation, which agreed to buy the Muskegon plant from Story Chemical's bankruptcy trustee. In order to do so, Aerojet…

United States v. Bestfoods - A Question Of Parenthood

In 1991, a fifteen-day bench trial on the question of liability focused on issues of corporate parenthood. Specifically, the district court sought to determine whether CPC, as the parent company of Ott II, and Aerojet, parent to the Cordova companies, had "owned or operated" the Muskegon facility within the definition established under Section 107(a)(2) of CERCLA. In so doing, the court noted that…

United States v. Bestfoods - "a Relaxed, Cercla-specific Rule Of Derivative Liability"

The subsequent Supreme Court case involved only CPC/Bestfoods, as the Aerojet action touched on questions unrelated to the issue of corporate veil-piercing. The Court, which reviewed the case in June of 1998--some forty years after Ott I first began operating at, and presumably polluting, the Muskegon site--handed down a unanimous ruling that upheld the Sixth Circuit's decision. Nonetheless, the C…

United States v. Bestfoods - Impact

Stephen L. Kass and Jean M. McCarroll, who published several pieces in the New York Law Journal regarding the liability of corporate parents under CERCLA, wrote that the Court's decision in Bestfoods had "brought some precision and balance to the task of determining under what circumstances a corporate parent may be charged with liability as an operator of its subsidiary's polluting facility." But…