South Florida Water Management District v. Montalvo

Juan Montalvo (plaintiff) owned Chemairspray (plaintiff) (the sprayers), which provided pesticide aerial spraying services to local farmers and ranchers (landowners) (defendant). Chemairspray leased a 10-acre parcel with an airstrip, where it loaded the pesticides into the planes and rinsed out the application tanks after pesticide-application runs. Both practices contaminated the airstrip site. Chemairspray leased the airstrip from New Farm, Inc. (defendant). Contamination from the airstrip leaked onto adjacent land owned by South Florida Water Management District (SFWMD) (defendant). New Farm and SFWMD sued the sprayers for cleanup costs, and the sprayers admitted liability. The district court found the sprayers liable for 75 percent of the cleanup costs and New Farm liable for the remaining 25 percent as the current owner. The sprayers filed a third-party complaint against the landowners for contribution, arguing the landowners arranged for the disposal of the pesticide wastes at the airstrip site because (1) the landowners contracted Chemairspray to spray pesticides, (2) the landowners owned the pesticides sprayed, (3) the generation of hazardous pesticide waste is part of the pesticide-spraying process, and (4) Chemairspray acted as the landowner’s agent in spraying and disposing of the pesticides. The sprayers did not allege that the landowners knew about the pesticide spills at the airstrip nor that the landowners had any control over the spraying process or the loading and disposal of the pesticides from the Chemairspray planes.