Joint and several liability

Joint and several liability is defined as any one PRP is potentially liable for all costs of the cleanup no matter how much of the total contamination is directly due to their disposal activities. 

The term liability is closely tied to the system of values and ethics that have developed in this country. In concise language define and give an example of the terms liability, strict liability, and Joint and several liability. Explain how the interpretation of liability affects waste incineration permitting, application, and design. 

Joint and several liability refers to the liability of each defendant for all damages even if more than one defendant is found liable. 

The problems of hazardous waste extend back many years. What to do with waste already disposed of also became a national issue. The result was the development of a Superfund. Contributions by both government and private industry created a source to cover the cost of cleaning up the worst of the many hazardous waste sites of the past. Industry contributed 75% of the initial 1.6 billion fund. The Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA), passed in late 1980, took action to clean up some hazardous waste sites. The act also addressed liability. It stated that those causing or contributing to a release or threatened release from an inactive hazardous waste site shall have strict, joint, and several liability for cleanup, containment and emergency response activities at the site. Liable parties included generators and transporters of the waste and owners and operators of the disposal site. 

Joint and several liability A type of liability in which more than one person is liable for damages, but in the event one party cannot pay, the other party is liable for the entire... 

CERCLA applies the concept of joint and several liability, so anyone who had any part in... 

I960 Comprehensive Emergency Response, Compensation and Liability Act (the Superfund ). Extended liability for hazardous-waste disposal to include past disposal activities. The Act authorised federal contributions to cleanup costs at abandoned sites more controversially, it retroactively imposed strict and joint and several liability for clean-up costs on potentially responsible parties (PRPs), however environmentally-sound original disposal practices and irrespective of each parties contribution to wastes disposed at a given site. 

The Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) requires the EPA to "clean up" chemical disposal sites. The cleanup funds are raised through a combination of tort suits against companies that have had some connection with either the disposal site or the chemicals (joint-and-several strict liability) and taxes on petroleum production, hazardous-waste facilities, and chemical products. When judgments go against landowners, trucking firms, container corporations, or other firms less directly connected with the site, the defendants ask their insurance companies to pay these judgments. Courts, then, must decide whether liability insurance contracts cover such claims. 

Under CERCLA and similar state hazardous waste laws, liability for contamination at a site is strict, joint and several, as well as retroactive. Anyone who was ever involved with the site—generators of hazardous substances, transporters of materials to or from the site, and any past or present owner—can all be held liable for the costs of cleanup. A fear of perpetual liability kept many private buyers, developers, lenders, and potential future owners of contaminated properties from investing in brownfields sites. 

Every effort has been made in preparing these volumes to provide information that is accurate and that will be useful to those involved in the chlor-alkali industry. The publisher and the authors jointly and severally make no guarantee and assume no liability in connection with any of the aforesaid information. 

Perhaps the points nanotechnology companies should remember most about CERCLA are (1) it can be applied retroactively and (2) liability can be joint, individual, and several (Section of Environment, Energy, and Resources, American Bar Association, 2006). The first point is important because even if engineered nanoscale materials are not considered a hazardous substance today, they may be considered as such tomorrow after the fact. The second point is important because a company with deep pockets may find itself liable for the entire cleanup costs of a contaminated site even if it only contributed a relatively small amount of material to the site. This may be especially important years down the road when other companies which may have been primary contributors have been long dissolved. 

These measures were passed as amendments to the Price-Anderson act in August 1957. The primary purpose of this act was to establish liability limits and no-fault provisions for insurance on nuclear reactor accidents. Such indemnity legislation was deemed essential by AEC, the emerging nuclear industry, and the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy who recognized that the probability of a severe reactor accident could not be reduced to zero. The original act, which has periodically ammended, had the government underwrite... 

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