Judge Rejects Bulk of 2 Suits Over Field Lab

A Los Angeles judge has tossed out the bulk of two lawsuits that claim activities at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory hurt neighbors’ health and contaminated their property.

Presented with a stack of newspaper clippings dating back a decade, Judge Valerie Baker determined in a tentative ruling this week that more than 450 Rocketdyne neighbors in the civil suits waited too long to file their cases.

The ruling, due to become final within 10 days, dismisses 10 of 13 causes of action in each of two lawsuits.

The full effect of Baker’s decision, however, is hard to gauge. Judges in two similar federal lawsuits against Rocketdyne have previously rejected the statute of limitations argument, and the plaintiffs’ attorneys in the current case have vowed to appeal.

Nonetheless, lawyers for Rocketdyne called the decision a victory.

“We’re very pleased with her decision,” said Gary M. Black, chief counsel for Boeing North American, Rocketdyne’s parent company. “We believe her decision is absolutely correct.”

Lawyers for the company argued that once news coverage of the contamination controversy began, residents were on notice that they might have a cause of action, Black said.

“The judge’s ruling agreed that the clock had begun to run, and that it had run out,” he said.

Westlake Village lawyer Edward L. Masry, an attorney for the plaintiffs in the two cases and a specialist in so-called toxic tort suits, said the two cases will continue on the remaining causes of action while Baker’s ruling is appealed.

Those remaining causes allege the contamination amounts to a continuing trespass on the plaintiffs’ property and a continuing public and private nuisance. Dismissed were allegations about negligence, liability, wrongful death, fraudulent concealment, alteration of evidence and infliction of emotional distress, among others.

“She’ll be reversed--hands down,” Masry said Thursday. “She said everyone should have known that their property was being damaged, they should have known about their cancer. She’s wrong.

“We’re still signing up clients,” he said.

The two suits, one of which is a class-action complaint, contend radionuclides and toxic chemicals--such as the carcinogens trichloroethylene and hexavalent chromium--from the field laboratory outside Simi Valley tainted the ground water, fouled the air and harmed the health and property of people living nearby.

The cases center on the open-air field lab, a 2,688-acre facility in the barren hills on the border of Los Angeles and Ventura counties, and three other Rocketdyne facilities in the San Fernando Valley. The Santa Susana plant, established in 1947, was the site of decades of rocket-engine testing and nuclear research.

While many of the issues are similar, the two lawsuits are unrelated to two cases--one of which also is a class-action complaint--pending in federal court. Black said he and his colleagues, however, will very likely present Baker’s ruling to the federal judge hearing those cases.

Masry said the logic of the judge’s decision--and Rocketdyne’s argument--falls short.

“How can you say, as Rocketdyne does, that there can’t possibly be anything wrong, nothing has gotten off that hill, and simultaneously take the position that people should have known?” he asked. “I seriously don’t think a federal judge will pay any attention to this; it was poorly reasoned.”

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Law professor Jennifer Arlen, who teaches corporate law at USC, said the statute of limitations could very well have ticked away for the property-damage claims, but that it was hard to determine without hearing details of the judge’s reasoning.

Arlen, however, said she had some concerns that the ruling might encourage plaintiffs to sue first and ask questions later.

“Say the contamination only went so far, and then later evidence showed it had gone farther, is the judge throwing out those claims?” Arlen asked. “If so, it creates an odd incentive to sue immediately at any hint of environmental contamination and then find out later how far it goes.

“What worries me,” she added, “is that this opinion could be so broad that it suggests that every time you see a newspaper article that a particular site might be contaminated, you have to rush out and sue if you have a disease, just in case your disease could be related to that contamination.”