Judge Denies Public View of 13,000 Pages of Mobil Pretrial Documents
A retired judge has decided the public is not entitled to see 13,000 pages of confidential documents Mobil Oil Co. released to Torrance lawyers after the city filed a public nuisance lawsuit against the company.
Judge Harry V. Peetris’ 24-page ruling late last week comes in response to a January, 1991, petition filed by The Times and the Daily Breeze newspapers seeking access to about 66,000 pages of documents as part of ongoing news coverage of problems at Mobil’s Torrance refinery.
Peetris’ ruling does not clearly state whether the other 53,000 pages of documents, which Mobil did not mark as confidential, will be available for public review. However, Peetris repeatedly notes that an agreement between Mobil and the city to designate certain documents as confidential “did not seal or place a blanket confidentiality cloak on all documents. . . . It protects from dissemination only those documents deemed confidential.”
Torrance filed its lawsuit in April, 1989, after a series of accidents, deaths and injuries at the plant raised concerns about the refinery’s impact on public health and safety. As part of pretrial research, Mobil was required to let the city review nearly 1.2 million pages of documents. Attorneys for the city made copies of 66,000 pages they determined to be most pertinent to their lawsuit.
Peetris was hired to oversee a consent agreement reached between Mobil and the city in October, 1990, less than three weeks before the case was scheduled to go to trial.
Under terms of the agreement, Mobil must phase out or significantly modify use of highly toxic hydrofluoric acid before the end of 1997. The acid is used to boost octane in fuel.
In addition, the agreement calls for a court-appointed safety adviser--Westinghouse Electric Corp.--to monitor a broad range of safety and environmental matters at the refinery.
However, the agreement did not address the public’s right of access to information about the refinery.
In addition to rejecting the newspapers’ request, Peetris last week issued a separate order denying a petition by attorneys from Trial Lawyers for Public Justice, a national public-interest law firm that specializes in precedent-setting damage and trial litigation. The group had sought access to the records on behalf of Friends of the Earth, the California Public Interest Research Group and several residents of Torrance.
Both the city and Mobil had agreed to abide by a protective order restricting access to any pretrial documents marked “confidential” by Mobil. About 13,000 pages of the 66,000 pages in the city’s possession bear that mark.
Attorneys for the city declined to comment or release the non-confidential documents until they could study the judge’s rulings in detail.
Attorneys for Mobil, who have argued that all 66,000 pages should remain confidential, were out of town and unavailable for comment. But company spokesman Jim Carbonetti said Mobil is pleased with the judge’s ruling.
“The records that were sought were private and not public documents,” he said. “The access would have interfered with the court-supervised proceedings under the consent decree (and would) only serve to disrupt the positive cooperation between the city and Mobil.”
An attorney for The Times said he will again ask that Torrance make the 53,000 non-confidential pages available for review.
“It’s been our position all along that there has been no restraint on the city which would prevent them from releasing the documents to us,” attorney Glen Smith said. “I think (Peetris’) ruling . . . bolsters that argument.”
