Sullivan v. Saint-Gobain Performance Plastics Corporation
United States District Court for the District of Vermont
2019 WL 8272995 (2019)
- Written by Tiffany Hester, JD
Facts
Saint-Gobain Performance Plastics (Saint-Gobain) (defendant) operated a plant in Bennington, Vermont, that released perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) into the air. Testing revealed extremely elevated PFOA levels in most private wells within a 20-square-mile area designated as the contamination zone. Several residents (plaintiffs) in the contamination zone who tested positive for elevated PFOA blood levels hired experienced environmental lawyers to sue Saint-Gobain. The residents had no symptoms and did not seek personal-injury damages; instead, they sought court-supervised medical testing to monitor for certain cancers associated with PFOA exposure. The residents claimed that approximately 8,000 other individuals were potentially exposed and sought class certification, proposing a class consisting of people who lived in the contamination zone, consumed PFOA-contaminated water, and tested positive for elevated PFOA blood levels but lacked illness symptoms. Saint-Gobain opposed class certification, arguing that a class action would not adequately protect the interests of those who developed illnesses later because claim preclusion would bar future personal-injury damages.
Rule of Law
Issue
Holding and Reasoning (Crawford, C.J.)
What to do next…
Here's why 834,000 law students have relied on our case briefs:
- Written by law professors and practitioners, not other law students. 46,500 briefs, keyed to 994 casebooks. Top-notch customer support.
- The right amount of information, includes the facts, issues, rule of law, holding and reasoning, and any concurrences and dissents.
- Access in your classes, works on your mobile and tablet. Massive library of related video lessons and high quality multiple-choice questions.
- Easy to use, uniform format for every case brief. Written in plain English, not in legalese. Our briefs summarize and simplify; they don’t just repeat the court’s language.
