A recent Law 360 story by Morgan Connley, “Attys For NJ Nab $2.5M Fee Award for MTBE MDL Deal” reports that a New York federal judge has granted almost $2.5 million in fees for attorneys who helped secure more than $16.3 million in settlements to resolve claims that a TotalEnergies unit and others contributed to gasoline additive contamination in New Jersey drinking water.
U.S. District Judge Vernon S. Broderick greenlighted the fee award, finding special counsel for New Jersey's attorney general earned a 15% cut of the $16.3 million they helped recover in litigation targeting Getty Property Corp. and Total Petrochemicals & Refining USA Inc. Attorneys from Cohn Lifland Pearlman Herrmann & Knopf LLP, Miller and Axline PC, the Law Offices of John K. Dema PC and Berger Montague shepherded the deals to resolve New Jersey's claims that the two companies polluted the Garden State's waters with methyl tertiary butyl ether, or MTBE, a gasoline additive.
Judge Broderick signed off on one consent order in December that saw Getty paying $13.5 million and another in January that arranged for the $1.5 million payment by Total. In separate litigation overseen by U.S. District Judge Freda Wolfson, another company agreed in December to pay $1.35 million. Neither company admitted guilt or liability in connection with the deal, according to the settlement.
New Jersey initially filed suit against Total, Getty Property — formerly Getty Petroleum Marketing Inc. — and others in state court in June 2007, but the case moved to New Jersey federal court and eventually ended up in New York multidistrict litigation. The defendants New Jersey targeted included MTBE manufacturers, oil refiners and major-brand marketers of gasoline that contained MTBE. Since the litigation landed on Judge Broderick's docket, the judge has approved multiple rounds of multimillion-dollar settlements resolving gasoline additive contamination claims.
In 2017, Judge Broderick signed off on a $39 million settlement that ended New Jersey's suit accusing ConocoPhillips and Phillips 66 of polluting the state's waters with MTBE. Two years prior, Coastal Eagle Point Oil Co. and El Paso Corp. agreed to pay $20 million to New Jersey to exit the litigation. Also in 2015, the state unveiled a $2.15 million settlement with Switzerland-based oil trader Vitol, as well as a separate deal in the MTBE litigation with parties tied to the Lyondell Chemical Co. bankruptcy.
Those agreements are part of a broader, steady series of settlements in the multidistrict litigation, which involves pollution from coast to coast. In January 2019, Judge Broderick gave his blessing to BP subsidiaries paying $14 million and Chevron agreeing to pay $11 million to resolve claims made by the Orange County Water District in California over sites allegedly impacted by MTBE.