Speaker:    

     

Vice President/Principal Scientist, Roux Associates, Inc.    

     

Environmental Forensic Tools for Establishing Divisibility    

 

There are a limited number of CERCLA divisibility rulings on the books, and even fewer where the courts affirmed divisibility of harm. A few weeks back, the US District Court in the Southern District of Indiana ruled that responsibility for co-mingled chlorinated solvent groundwater contamination was divisible based on technical factors and then allocated past and future costs among responsible parties. Roux’s own Adam Love, Ph.D. was the Testifying Expert in this case who successfully opined that the co-mingled plume was divisible. He then developed an apportionment of liability upon which the judge based the ultimate allocation, after applying equitable factors. Dr. Love will provide an introduction to the fundamental approaches to divisibility and then dive into the case study from Von Duprin v. Moran Electric in order to describe in detail how these principals were put into practice.