More Toxic Tort in New York is Likely

A toxic tort is a special type of personal injury lawsuit in which the plaintiff claims that exposure to a chemical—or industrial waste product—caused the plaintiff's injury or disease. Eckardt C. Beck, Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency during the Love Canal crisis suggested that there are probably hundreds of similar New York dumpsites that are providing serious toxic exposure to its citizens. If the residents of Love Canal had been aware that they were residing on industrial waste, most would not have moved there in the first place. How many more buried industrial waste sites will show themselves and require the work of a toxic tort lawyer in New York?

Love Canal, a neighborhood in Niagara Falls, New York, became the subject of national and international toxic tort case following the discovery of 21,000 tons of industrial waste that had been buried beneath the neighborhood by Hooker Chemical. Hooker Chemical sold the site to the Niagara Falls School Board for $1.00, with a deed explicitly detailing the danger contained within the site, and including a liability limitation clause drawn up by toxic tort lawyer in New York. The construction efforts of a sewage system, school and a housing development, combined with particularly heavy rainstorms, released the industrial waste, leading to a public-health emergency and a New York toxic tort showdown. Hooker Chemical was found negligent, through the toxic tort case, in their disposal of waste but not reckless in the sale of the land, in which has become a test case for toxic tort lawyers in New York to pursue.

Hooker warned the New York School Board that the industrial waste could kill and insisted that the Board pass this warning on to any subsequent owner of the property; it urged the Board not to construct the school or any other buildings directly over the canal; it protested the prospect of any subsurface construction on the Canal. These warnings were repeatedly ignored by the New York School Board.

Today, houses in the New York residential areas on the east and west sides of the canal have been demolished. Fewer than 90 of the original 900 families opted to remain. The most toxic area, needing the help of a toxic tort lawyer in New York, has been reburied with a thick plastic liner, clay and dirt and surrounded by high barbed wire fencing. It has been calculated by toxic tort lawyers that 248 separate chemicals, including 60 kilograms of dioxin, have been unearthed from the canal. The construction of the school building on the northern end of the canal was where Hooker disposed of "fly ash, trash, and HG1 spent cake," the latter, according to a Hooker spokesman, being an abbreviation for lindane (a chlorinated hydrocarbon pesticide more toxic than DDT).

Love Canal, New York, is an important footnote in United States environmental history as the New York site led to the Comprehensive Environmental Response Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA) or Superfund.

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