Wright v. Union Oil Company of California

DOLLAR AMOUNT: $63 Million

CASE NAME: Wright v. Union Oil Company of California

TYPE OF CASE: Toxic Tort

COURT: Santa Barbara Superior Court

JUDGE(S): Judge James F. Rigali

PLAINTIFF LAWYERS: Ernst Law Group, M. Taylor Ernst, Don A. Ernst, Terry J. Kilpatrick, Danielle E. Miller; Trial Lawyers for Justice, Jakob Z. Norman, Brian J. Ward, Erin L. Powers, Ansley O'Brien

DEFENSE LAWYERS: Alston & Bird LLP, Jason Levin, Jennifer Bonneville; King & Spalding LLP, Robert Meadows

It required "a David versus Goliath battle" to win a multimillion-dollar verdict for a man who developed cancer more than 25 years after living over an old Union Oil sump pit but was in remission at the time of trial, said Taylor Ernst, one of the plaintiff's attorneys.

"There's a lot of firms that would look at that type of facts and go, I don't want anything to do with that case," he said. Instead, Ernst brought in Trial Lawyers for Justice as co-counsel, led by Wyoming's Jakob Norman. Together, the team took the giant company through a 23-day trial that ended in a Santa Barbara jury awarding their client $63 million, including $41 million in punitive damages, setting a record for the Santa Maria courthouse. Wright v. Union Oil Co. of California, 21CV00925 (Sta. Barb. Super. Ct., filed March 8, 2021).

It was "scorched earth litigation," Ernst said. "Instead of answering discovery responses normally, they'd refer us to a website. ... It was those kinds of tactics [that] made it difficult for us."

The plaintiff, Kevin Wright, had bought a house in 1985 in a development built on land that, during the 1970s, had been the Santa Maria Valley Oil & Gas Field, operated by Union Oil and several other companies. Wright's bedroom was directly atop a chemical sump pit the size of an Olympic swimming pool where the oil companies dumped waste products, including the carcinogen benzene.

According to state regulations, the companies should have cleaned out the pit upon closing the oil field, Norman said. "In this particular case, they didn't clean it up. They left all the stuff in there."

Wright lived in the house until early 1987. In 2015, he developed multiple myeloma, which can be caused by benzine.

TAYLOR ERNST

To prove the plaintiff's case, his attorneys found old aerial photos of the oil field showing the location of the sump. Experts created a map overlaying the plan of the house onto those photos. "You could see the [pit] is literally underneath our client's bedroom," Ernst said.

The defense contended that there had been no regulation requiring it to clean out the pit, the plaintiffs' attorneys said. "In their opening statement, they mislead the jury that there was no law," Norman said.

"Later in the trial, we proved there was a law," Ernst said. "They acted surprised to know that." He added that at one point, the judge told defense counsel, "I have a hard time believing you weren't aware of this rule."

Under the doctrine of subsequent remedial measures, the plaintiff's team was not allowed to introduce evidence that Union Oil had torn down the house years later and hauled out some 200 truckloads of contaminated soil. But, the company did tell the jury about those cleanup efforts during the punitive damages phase of the trial.

In an emailed statement, the defendant company said it was gratified that in November, the judge eliminated the punitive damages and trimmed the total award to $15 million. "Union Oil Company of California has nonetheless appealed from the substantially reduced judgment because it should not be liable at all," it said.

-- Don DeBenedictis