## Facts

- The United States sued Union Corporation, Metal Bank of America, Inc., and related individual defendants to recover past and future response costs and to obtain remediation and injunctive relief for contamination at the Cottman Avenue Superfund Site in Philadelphia.
- The contamination involved releases of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) associated with recycling electrical transformers and similar equipment containing PCB dielectric fluids.
- The defendants (as third-party plaintiffs) filed third-party claims against Consolidated Edison Co. of New York, Public Service Electric & Gas Co. of New Jersey, and Monsanto Co., seeking to shift or share liability for contamination.
- Monsanto was sued as the manufacturer of PCBs, even though the third-party plaintiffs did not obtain PCB-containing materials directly from Monsanto and Monsanto did not operate at the site.
- The litigation was initiated in 1980, placed in suspense in 1983 during attempted remediation, and returned to the active docket in 1998 after the government asserted remediation efforts failed or were incomplete.
- The decision addressed dispositive motions on state-law claims asserted against Monsanto, including strict products liability, strict liability for abnormally dangerous activity, and trespass.

## Issues

1. Whether a PCB manufacturer could be held strictly liable under Pennsylvania products liability law for site contamination where the PCB-containing product was not shown to be defective or unreasonably dangerous for its intended use.
2. Whether manufacturing and selling PCBs constitutes an abnormally dangerous activity under Pennsylvania law warranting strict liability.
3. Whether a manufacturer can be liable in trespass for PCBs found at a contaminated site absent intent to cause PCBs to enter that property or direct involvement in their deposition there.

## Decision

- The court applied Pennsylvania law to the asserted state-law claims against Monsanto.
- The court granted summary judgment for Monsanto on strict products liability, concluding the record did not support treating Monsanto’s PCB-containing products as defective or unreasonably dangerous for their intended electrical uses.
- The court granted summary judgment for Monsanto on the abnormally dangerous activity claim, holding Monsanto’s manufacture and sale of PCBs did not qualify as an abnormally dangerous activity under the Restatement-based Pennsylvania standard.
- The court granted summary judgment for Monsanto on trespass, holding that the required intent and causal connection for an intentional invasion of land were not established.
- The government’s federal claims against the original defendants under CERCLA and RCRA were not resolved by this ruling.

## Legal Principles

- Under Pennsylvania strict products liability (Restatement (Second) of Torts § 402A), liability turns on whether the product is defective and unreasonably dangerous in its intended or foreseeable use; downstream environmental harm tied to handling or disposal does not, by itself, establish defectiveness for intended use.
- Strict liability for abnormally dangerous activity (Restatement (Second) of Torts §§ 519–520) is activity-based; ordinary commercial manufacture and sale of a hazardous product, without site-specific dangerous conduct, may fall outside the doctrine.
- Pennsylvania trespass generally requires an intentional act causing a physical invasion of land; foreseeability that a product might later reach a site through others’ actions is insufficient absent intent or directed deposition.

## Conclusion

The court entered summary judgment for Monsanto on Pennsylvania strict products liability, abnormally dangerous activity, and trespass claims arising from PCB contamination at a Superfund site, limiting third-party plaintiffs’ ability to use state tort theories to impose liability on an upstream manufacturer lacking intentional or site-directed conduct.


United States v. Union Corp., 277 F. Supp. 2d 478 (E.D. Pa. 2003)