Court Rejects Appeal in Rocketdyne Lawsuit

A federal appeals court has refused to intervene in a class-action lawsuit against Rocketdyne, which is accused of damaging neighboring properties with rocket engine and nuclear research at its Santa Susana Field Laboratory.

The failure of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to decertify a class-action suit against Boeing North American, Rocketdyne’s parent company, means that lawyers can mail up to 500,000 letters notifying potential plaintiffs. The court’s decision was made public Wednesday.

Lawyers for Boeing had asked the appeals court to review U.S. District Judge Audrey B. Collins’ decision to grant class certification to the plaintiffs, which allowed the 150 plaintiffs named in the suit to act as surrogates for thousands of others. The higher court declined to hear the appeal, thus allowing Collins’ decision to stand.

Collins told lawyers in October to delay notifying other potential plaintiffs pending the higher court’s decision on the appeal.

Class certification was a technical ruling that allowed plaintiffs to be heard en masse--raising the stakes of the lawsuit--but it is not a decision on the case’s merits.

“This is a step forward for us on a long journey,” said A. Barry Cappello of Santa Barbara, the plaintiffs’ attorney. “It means that the defendant’s attempts to have the case put on hold and argued before the appeals court have been denied. The class-action case moves forward. Class notification letters will go out in the near future.”

The timing of those letters remains up in the air until Collins sets a new schedule for the case. It is anticipated the letters would go out within a month or two.

Rocketdyne spokesman Dan Beck decried the decision as “a lump of coal in our stocking.”

“We’re very disappointed by this,” Beck said. “We are still convinced that this case has no merit from a class-action standpoint or from [an individual] lawsuit standpoint. . . . We’ll defend this whether it’s 1,000 plaintiffs or one plaintiff. This decision doesn’t change that at all.”

The case contends that the rocket engine testing that propelled America’s space race also fouled the air, water, soil and property of neighbors and could compromise their health.

The suit, which could last for years, involves Rocketdyne’s open-air, 2,700-acre Santa Susana lab in the mountains between Simi Valley and Chatsworth, plus three facilities in the west San Fernando Valley.

The appeals court’s written decision, dated Dec. 17 but received by lawyers on Wednesday, does not necessarily mean that the case will ever go to trial, said Gary M. Black, a chief counsel for aerospace giant Boeing North American.

“We knew [the appeal] was a long shot when we started, but as we’ve often said, we believe this is a case without merit,” Black said. “There are a variety of reasons a defendant in a case without merit can be spared having to go to trial. Summary judgment is one of them. A motion to dismiss on legal grounds is another.”

The case also could be settled out of court before it reaches trial. A trial date could be months--if not years--down the road because the case involves more than 1 million pages of documents spanning four decades and depositions are far from over.

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Rocketdyne lawyers argue that the class-action suit will falter because the plaintiffs have not shown any evidence of off-site contamination besides that found to have leached from the Santa Susana Field Laboratory to a neighboring Jewish studies center and to the Sage Ranch.

Cappello said carcinogenic contamination, such as the presence of trichloroethylene in ground water, would be hard to find because the solvent hasn’t been used in years and ground water moves.

However, he said scientists and epidemiologists will make the connection between the chemicals used in the past and some neighbors’ present health woes.

“We have people in this class that are dying,” Cappello said. “We have people watching their neighbors struggle with cancer. A lot of people are worried about what’s going on out there.”