Transporter Liability Under CERCLA
Editors' Summary: CERCLA continues to be one of the most complex and convoluted of the federal environmental statutes. Many legal battles have been waged over the scope of liability of potentially responsible parties. Although the courts have agreed on some of the issues concerning liability, most of the cases to date have focused on the liability of generators, owners, and operators. Yet transporters of hazardous waste are also vital links in a framework that envisions oversight of hazardous waste "from cradle to grave," and are subject to some of the same liability as others covered by CERCLA. This article examines that transporter liability. The authors discuss the cases that have directly or indirectly addressed transporters' liability under CERCLA, and examine the present status of that liability. They discuss the relevance of joint and several liability and causation as those principles have been applied to generators and owners or operators, and analyze the provisions of CERCLA that were written specifically with transporters in mind. Observing that some of these issues concerning transporters' CERCLA liability are as yet unresolved, the authors suggest lines of argument that transporters can use to limit their potential liability.