In a September 24, 2013 opinion, the California Court of Appeal for the Second District revived the claims of 58 plaintiffs whose personal injury claims against Exxon Mobil were dismissed on statute of limitations grounds.
Most of the plaintiffs in the case, Alexander v. Exxon Mobil, No. B242458, were residents of an apartment complex in an unincorporated area of Los Angeles County. From 1924 to 1962, various Mobil Oil Corporation related-entities operated an above-ground storage tank farm adjacent to the apartment complex. The plaintiffs alleged that hydrocarbon releases from the tank farm caused a wide range of personal injuries and property damage and asserted claims for, among other things, negligence, trespass, nuisance, public nuisance, breach of the warranty of habitability, various statutory violations, and wrongful death.
Exxon Mobil (and other defendants) asserted statute of limitations defenses based on a letter from the Los Angeles County Housing Authority that certain plaintiffs received in May 2007 and a community meeting regarding the possible closure of the apartment complex in the same year. The letter referred to “environmental concerns” at the complex but did not mention any specific health risk to residents. The same “concerns” were also discussed at the community meeting, although the focus of the meeting was on plans to close the apartment complex.
After several rounds of pleading, the trial court issued an order under Cottle v Superior Court, 3 Cal. App. 4th 1367 (1992), requiring the plaintiffs to submit offers of proof with their next amended complaint showing, among other things, how and when they learned of the presence of environmental contamination at the apartment complex. After the plaintiffs filed their amended complaint (accompanied by Cottle declarations), the trial court sustained demurrers without leave to amend as to approximately 100 plaintiffs whose declarations admitted that they had received some form of notice of the contamination more than two years before filing their claims in April 2010, holding that those claims were barred by the statute of limitations and could not be saved by the discovery rule.
Fifty-eight of the dismissed plaintiffs appealed the trial court’s ruling, and the Court of Appeal reversed. The appellate court observed that while there was no dispute as to when the plaintiffs learned of the existence of contamination at the apartment complex, the trial court erred in concluding as a matter of law that the letter from the Housing Authority and the community meeting were sufficient to put the plaintiffs on notice of their personal injury claims.
The court reasoned that knowledge that the existence of environmental contamination was not enough to put the plaintiffs on notice of their claims. Rather, a reasonable trier of fact might conclude the plaintiffs had no reason to suspect the contamination was capable of causing them personal injury. The court therefore concluded that the plaintiffs could take advantage of the discovery rule to avoid dismissal of their claims on demurrer.
In reaching this conclusion, the court distinguished CAMSI IV v. Hunter Technology Corp., 230 Cal. App. 3d 1525 (1991), and Mangini v. Aerojet-General Corp., 230 Cal. App. 3d 1125 (1991), two leading cases in which appellate courts held that notice of the existence of environmental contamination foreclosed the application of the discovery rule to save time-barred property damage claims. The court noted that the “injury” in both of these cases “was the existence of the pollutants, which devalued their property.” In contrast, the Alexander plaintiffs’ personal injury claims required them to link the existence of the pollutants to the alleged adverse health effects. The information that the plaintiffs possessed in April 2008, two years before their complaint was filed, was not as a matter of law sufficient to make such a connection.
--Chris Jensen
For more information, please contact Chris Jensen at (415) 228-5411, or cdj@bcltlaw.com
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