Santa Clarita Valley Water Agency v. Whittaker Corp. et al.

Dollar Amount: $65.9 million

Case Name: Santa Clarita Valley Water Agency v. Whittaker Corp.

Type of Case: Negligence and public nuisance

Court: Central District

Judge(s): U.S. District Judge Stanley Blumenfeld, Jr.

Plaintiff Lawyers: Nossaman LLP, Patrick J. Richard, Byron P. Gee, Frederic A. Fudacz, Ilse Scott, Raven J. McGuane

Defense Lawyers: Edlin Gallagher Huie + Blum, Daniel E. Trowbridge, Fred M. Blum, Michael E. Gallagher

As California struggles with drought, wasted rainstorm runoff and other water issues, a different problem was on the docket when Santa Clarita County officials sued a major defense contractor over the problem of historic groundwater contamination.

Byron P. Gee,

A federal jury agreed with the county's claims against Whittaker Corp. and awarded $65.9 million for remediation and new treatment facilities to remove perchlorate and volatile organic compounds from impacted wells. Santa Clarita Valley Water Agency v. Whittaker Corp. et al., 2:18-cv-06825 (C.D. Cal., filed Aug. 8, 2018).

"These issues go back to the manufacture of millions of rounds of ammunition assembled for the World War II effort," said Nossaman LLP partner Byron P. Gee, who, earlier in his career, represented Santa Clarita County in prior litigation against Whittaker.

In 2007, Whittaker Corp. agreed to a multimillion-dollar settlement that required the aerospace company to fund a groundwater treatment facility and two replacement wells, but over time other wells in the area became polluted with Whittaker's harmful chemicals.

Whittaker purchased the Bermite Powder Co. in 1967. The combined facility in Santa Clarita will now get a major cleanup.

"Some of the water supply wells have been contaminated by the Whittaker-Bermite site and some of them were required to be shut down," Gee said. "The money will be used to install the contamination treatment facilities that will restore the lost capacity associated with these drinking water wells."

Frederic A. Fudacz

Gee added, "Being in the third straight year of drought, the groundwater supply for Santa Clarita Valley Water is very important and will help ensure that they will be able to supply customers with drinking water."

An attorney for Whittaker did not return a message seeking comment.

The plaintiffs featured testimony from a witness who knew the Wittaker-Bermite property well. "Part of our theme was cover-up," said Nossaman LLP's Patrick J. Richard. "We found a man from Cal-EPA who'd been on the site in the 1980s and talked about seeing barrels bursting and dumping sites not disclosed.

Ilse Scott

"We also had Whittaker's internal memos from back then. Those went to the company's knowledge of what was going on."

Gee said another witness from the company told in one memo of his failure to show an EPA inspector a hidden landfill. "Must have slipped my mind," the man wrote.

"This was a complex and very important case," Richard summed up, "given California's water use challenges and the damage done by a polluter that didn't take responsibility."

--John Roemer