Jury Awards Homeless Center $14.6 Million

The St. Vincent de Paul/Joan Kroc Center for the Homeless was awarded $14.6 million Tuesday in a lawsuit filed against its neighbor, California Linen Supply.

The money is to cover what the center already has spent and will continue to spend in order to treat ground water contaminated by dry-cleaning chemicals that seeped from underground storage tanks at the property next door.

“It’s not like you walk out of the courtroom with a check in your hand,” said Father Joe Carroll, founder and director of the 350-bed facility.

In 1985, during construction of the center at 1501 Imperial Ave., a spark from a drill caused an explosion, alerting Carroll to the possibility that ground water flowing onto the property was contaminated by chemicals used by the dry-cleaning operation, which had been operating since 1905.

The award follows four years of litigation to get California Linen to clean up its property, said Brian D. Monaghan, attorney for the homeless center. Monaghan said the center has spent about $152,000 in four years for monthly testing of the ground water and soil.

Additionally, the city has permitted the center to pump the contaminated water and divert it into the municipal sewage system. The cost to the center has ranged between $500 and $1,000 a month, Carroll said.

Eventually, the center will have to dig a series of wells to monitor and capture the water and set up a treatment system for the water before it is released into the bay. The cost of that has been estimated between $3.4 and $5.6 million, Monaghan said. The contaminated ground water has put the center in debt for about $1 million, Carroll said. The center runs medical, educational and employment programs for the homeless.

The Superior Court jury decided there was a total of $22.7 million in damages, Monaghan said. But the jury divided responsibility for the damages, allotting the center one third of the responsibility.

“They said we should have tested the soil for contaminants before we built (the center),” Monaghan said.

The remaining damages are to be shouldered by California Linen Supply and its parent company, Service Control Corp., which acquired the property from Balloon Cleaners and Dye Works in 1985. The company contended during the trial that it did not run the dry-cleaning operation after it acquired the property, Monaghan said.

He said California Linen removed three tanks from its property which were between 30 and 40 years old. Two of those tanks were leaking petroleum hydrocarbons. The size of the tanks were in dispute during the trial, he said.

Records submitted to the San Diego Fire Department by California Linen indicated that the tanks had capacities of 1,000 and 3,000 gallons. But, Monaghan said, a California Linen consultant, testified that the company’s chief engineer told her the capacities of the tanks were 5,000 and 8,000 gallons.

Records for the site are incomplete, Monaghan said. His own expert estimated there were about 7,000 gallons of petroleum hydrocarbons at the site.

Chemicals found in the ground water were petroleum hydrocarbons and chlorinated hydrocarbons. Monaghan said the source of the chlorinated hydrocarbons were not determined at the trial.

Both chemicals are toxic, but the petroleum hydrocarbons are explosive when they vaporize, Monaghan said. That fact has made the property uninsurable for damages caused by explosion.

Daniel Lamb, attorney for California Linen Supply and Service Control Corp., failed to return a telephone call made to his office.