Plaintiffs in Suit Against Mobil Dealt a Setback : Torrance: Judge denies access to legal summaries of the city’s public nuisance suit that was settled last October.

Torrance residents pursuing a class-action lawsuit against the Mobil refinery will not get to see legal summaries from the city’s public nuisance lawsuit against the company, a judge ruled Tuesday.

Retired Judge Harry Peetris, who was hired to supervise negotiations in Torrance’s lawsuit against Mobil, decided that attorneys in the class-action case may not have copies of confidential briefs and exhibits filed with the court by the city’s attorneys in preparation for last October’s settlement of its lawsuit.

The briefs and exhibits--perhaps several hundred pages long--contain the essence of the city’s arguments and supporting analysis in the two-year legal battle with Mobil, and obtaining them would have greatly streamlined the work of the plaintiffs’ lawyers.

Peetris did rule, however, that the class-action plaintiffs are entitled to see all of the documents that Mobil gave Torrance over the course of the city’s lawsuit. That material is estimated to include as many as 1 million pages.

Attorneys in the class-action suit, which was filed in Torrance Superior Court in February, 1989, have decided to pay for copies of between 50,000 and 60,000 pages of Mobil documents that the city had identified as key material.

The decision not to share the summaries could stretch out litigation on the class action for many months, said Christopher Angelo, the trial attorney in the class-action suit.

“This is going to force us to reinvent the wheel,” Angelo said. “What this ruling in essence says is, ‘Those (summaries) are just the needles from the haystack, and you can go through the same haystack yourself.’ ”

The class action lists 610 plaintiffs seeking damage payments for alleged health problems and property devaluation caused by the refinery. The plaintiffs, citing the similarity of interests between them and the city, had tried to piggyback their case onto the city’s.

In their arguments against turning over their summaries, however, attorneys for Torrance argued that the city and Mobil no longer are adversaries.

The city entered into a consent decree with Mobil in October. Under terms of the decree, Peetris will appoint a safety adviser for the refinery and continue to oversee the refinery’s phase-out of highly toxic hydrofluoric acid over the next seven years.

“We are in a situation wherein we . . . are trying to resolve our problems and live together,” said attorney Ralph Nutter during the two-hour hearing in Peetris’ downtown office. “We would hope that we have established an ongoing relationship that would be to the advantage of the people and of Mobil.”

Because of that newly cooperative relationship, Nutter said, court rules that allow people suing the same defendant to share information and work with one another should not apply.

Angelo said he primarily wanted to obtain a four-inch-thick compilation of the most pertinent Mobil documents that the city’s attorneys had created during an arduous, 10-month review process.

Noting that his plaintiffs--all Torrance residents--already had subsidized that expensive review by paying taxes to the city, Angelo argued that the city should share the product of its efforts.

In addition, Angelo argued that the city should cooperate with him because he had been helping the city prior to the settlement, in part by providing 30 of his plaintiffs to act as eyewitnesses in the city’s suit.

Attorneys for the city said they already had located those people without Angelo’s help.

“They were suing for a public nuisance; we’re suing for a private nuisance,” Angelo said. “That clearly reflects a joint interest. Now, all of a sudden . . . they’re saying there isn’t an adversarial relationship between the city and Mobil. That’s news to me.”

Angelo said the ruling will complicate his efforts to use the city’s depositions of key witnesses. Instead, he said, he now may be forced to conduct the lengthy witness interviews all over again.

Michael Leslie, another of the city’s attorneys, said Torrance opposed Angelo’s request because it would have required revealing legal strategy and might have involved waiving the city’s attorney/client privacy privilege.

“Essentially, he wants the benefit of our judgment,” Leslie said. “Instead, what he’ll have is the benefit of our judgment in narrowing the 1 million pages down to 50,000 or 60,000 pages of the most pertinent material. That should be sufficient.”