Lawyers representing victims of a massive gasoline spill in Baltimore County?s Jacksonville area earlier this year are now fighting to keep their lawsuits in circuit court.
Representing Exxon Mobil Corp., owner of the gas station where 25,000 gallons of gas leaked from an underground tank in February, lawyer Andrew Gendron told a federal judge last week that the cases should be sent to a panel that makes decisions on cases that could be heard in more than one jurisdiction.
That panel could send the case to a judge in Brooklyn, New York, who is handling federal cases involving fuel additive methyl tertiary butyl ether, or MTBE.
Two local firms ? the Law Offices of Peter Angelos and Snyder Slutkin & Snyder ? have filed separate suits against Exxon Mobil and the station?s operator on behalf of residents whose propertiesand wells were destroyed by the spill.
The station didn?t report the spill until more than a month after it began.
Gendron said because the fuel company operates under the federal Environmental Protection Agency, the suit belongs in federal court. He also said all MTBE contamination cases must be heard by a federal judge under a clause in the Energy Policy Act of 2005.
“It?s intended to provide consistency and efficiency in judicial administration,” he said. “One judge is hearing all of these claims. You don?t have multiple decision makers making potentially conflicting decisions.”
But lawyers from the two firms say the clause only applies to liability claims ? that Exxon Mobil made a bad choice when it added MTBE to the gasoline.
Phil Stein of Snyder Slutkin & Snyder, which filed more than 50 individual suits seeking a total of $1 billion, said his case isn?t about what?s in the gasoline, but that it spilled. He said the case should stay in state court.
“Exxon thinks because our lawsuits all make literally one reference in 40 pages to MTBE, that suits falls into a statute that allows them to push admittedly state law claims into federal court,” Stein said. “Just because we mention MTBE once doesn?t mean it [the suit] relates to MTBE.”
Following the spill, liquid fuel turned up in one monitoring well and 62 of 252 supply wells tested positive for traces of MTBE.
The attorneys said they expect U.S. District Judge Marvin Garbis, who heard the debate Wednesday, to make a ruling in the next few weeks.
