Innis Arden Country Club is a well-run country club that has operated for over 100 years on beautiful acreage in Old Greenwich, CT. Close friends of mine are members–the food is good, the golfers congenial, and laughing children run barefoot across the pool deck in good weather. Club members had been stunned to learn in 2004 that PCB contamination had been discovered on the golf course property, not far from where an industrial company, Pitney Bowes, had once conducted operations on an adjacent parcel in Stamford. The country club’s environmental consultants determined that Pitney Bowes was the source of the contamination, which Pitney Bowes denied, and that PCBs from the Pitney Bowes property had migrated by way of storm water and surface water runoff to Innis Arden. What no one could dispute was that the country club had not placed the PCBs on the golf course–it was what CERCLA characterizes as an “innocent landowner”. On June 26, 2009, the federal district court in Connecticut dismissed Innis Arden’s complaint prior to trial and affirmed a prior sanctions award against the country club. Innis Arden Golf Club v. Pitney Bowes, Inc. et al. Case No. 3:06 cv 1352 (JBA), 2009 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 54135. Something had gone terribly wrong! But what?
The court dismissed Innis Arden’s lawsuit because the court determined that Innis Arden’s consultant had destroyed key evidence that allegedly linked the PCB’s at the country club to Pitney Bowes. Without being able to perform tests on the actual soil samples the consultant had taken, Pitney Bowes claimed it was unable to refute the consultant’s claim that the PCB’s on the golf course were identical to PCB’s identified on the Pitney Bowes property. The court’s ruling is a strong reminder of the obligations of parties to a lawsuit and their experts to ensure that tangible evidence, such as as a soil sample taken to the lab for testing, is preserved. Central to the court’s ruling was the finding that the soil sampling in question had been performed to help prepare the country club and its lawyers for the case. Magistrate Judge had earlier ruled that “counsel was actively involved in the investigation and analysis of the samples in preparation for legal action” Sanctions were awarded even though the court concluded that Innis Arden had not intended to destroy evidence or disadvantage Pitney Bowes in the case. In addition to arguing that it had been prejudiced by the loss of the soil samples, Pitney Bowes argued that the country club’s environmental experts, however well-qualifiled they might have been, had failed to use appropriate methodology in reaching their expert opinions that Pitney Bowes had caused the contamination of the neighboring property. Judge Janet Bond Arterton agreed with Pitney Bowes and concluded that Innis Arden’s trial experts were not sufficiently reliable to be permitted to testify at trial. Because Innis Arden could not prove its case at trial without expert proof, the judge granted summary judgment to the defendants and dismissed the complaint. Thus, at the end of the day, the country club’s consultants. The destruction of evidence may have provided the court without a separate, independent basis for dismissing the case, but that issue become moot due to the granting of summary judgment.
