The US Supreme Court ruled Monday that oil giant Shell was not to blame for pollution caused by chemical products it was delivering, and did not have share the costs of cleaning up toxic sites.

The US government was trying to recover from Shell part of the cost of cleaning up a polluted California site, where Brown & Bryant Inc. stored pesticides until an environmental investigation led to its bankruptcy in 1988.

Shell Oil Company, the producer of the chemicals, maintained it was not responsible for the cleanup after selling to Brown & Bryant the pesticide called D-D, which leaked into the ground and threatened area water supplies.

Eight of the nine Supreme Court justices agreed on Monday, with only one against.

"The Court of Appeals erred by holding Shell liable as an arranger under Cercla for the costs of remediating environmental contamination at the Arvin California facility," the top US court ruled in its decision.

Brown & Bryant operated in Arvin, California, between 1960 and 1988 on a site which they owned, apart from one parcel of land which they rented to a railroad company.

The case reached the Supreme Court after a California court boosted Shell's share of the clean-up operation and that of two railway companies which owned part of the land.

In 1996, the US government applied the "Superfund" Law — formally known as the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA) — which allowed them to recover clean-up funds from other companies.

While Shell was cleared of any participation in the cost of the clean-up, which stretches into millions of dollars, the Supreme Court ruled the railway companies must pay nine percent of the cost.

"Furthermore, we conclude that the district court reasonably apportioned the railroads' share of the site remediation costs at nine percent," the judges said.

In a separate case, two railway companies, Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corp. and Union Pacific Corp., had maintained they played only a minor role in the contamination of the California site.

Share This Article With Planet Earth