## Facts

- The Broadway–Pantano Landfill Site in Tucson, Arizona required environmental remediation under CERCLA and Arizona’s WQARF statute.
- Arizona’s environmental agency negotiated settlements with 22 potentially responsible parties (PRPs) providing payment obligations and broad releases, including protection from contribution claims by other PRPs.
- The State represented that total projected remediation costs were about $75 million and that the settling parties’ comparative responsibility was only 0.01%–0.2%, but the record did not contain technical, cost, or comparative-fault support for those figures.
- The State filed a federal action seeking judicial approval and entry of the proposed CERCLA/WQARF consent decrees.
- Nonsettling PRPs (including Raytheon and Pima County) intervened, objecting that the settlements were unfair and would shift disproportionate costs to nonsettling parties; they also sought declaratory relief concerning their future CERCLA liability.
- The district court approved and entered the consent decrees, stating it would defer to the agency’s judgment that the settlements were fair and in the public interest, and denied the intervenors’ request for declaratory relief.

## Issues

1. Whether the district court erred in denying declaratory relief on the intervenors’ future CERCLA liability when the intervenors did not plead a claim expressly requesting that relief.
2. Whether the district court abused its discretion by approving and entering CERCLA consent decrees without independently evaluating whether they were fair, reasonable, and consistent with CERCLA’s objectives, including whether settlement payments bore a rational relationship to the settling parties’ comparative liability.

## Decision

- The Ninth Circuit affirmed the denial of declaratory relief because the intervenors did not request that relief in their operative pleadings.
- The Ninth Circuit reversed approval of the CERCLA consent decrees because the district court failed to independently scrutinize the decrees and instead gave undue deference to the environmental agency.
- The court remanded for further proceedings consistent with the requirement of meaningful judicial review.
- A partial concurrence/dissent agreed on the declaratory-relief ruling but would have given greater latitude to the agency and the district court in approving the settlements.

## Legal Principles

- District courts must independently scrutinize CERCLA consent decrees and cannot rely solely on an agency’s unsupported assertions that a settlement is fair, reasonable, and consistent with CERCLA’s objectives.
- Fairness review includes comparing the proportion of total projected cleanup costs to be paid by settling parties with the proportion of liability attributable to them.
- A record supporting key cost and comparative-liability estimates is necessary to permit meaningful judicial review of CERCLA settlements that provide contribution protection.
- Declaratory relief generally must be pleaded; courts are not required to grant unrequested declaratory relief.

## Conclusion

The Ninth Circuit held that unpleaded requests for declaratory relief on future CERCLA liability need not be addressed, but vacated the district court’s approval of CERCLA consent decrees because the court deferred to the agency without an independent, record-based assessment of fairness and proportionality to comparative liability.


Arizona v. City of Tucson, 761 F.3d 1005 (9th Cir. 2014)