ATLANTA — The Supreme Court justices focused on the mechanics of a class-action lawsuit Monday as they considered an appeal in a case against a large pulp mill that releases hydrogen-sulfide gas.
The time for the state’s highest court to consider the matter means Effingham County residents suing Georgia-Pacific Corporation over the release of the smelly, corrosive gas at the Savannah River Mill will have to wait another three or four months for their day in court.
Two couples living across from the plant, Kirbi and Aaron Ratner and David and Kathy McDonald, filed suit against the company in 2010. Their lawyers asked Effingham Superior Court Judge William E. Woodrum Jr. to certify a class of 116 owners of 65 parcels also near the plant, making it a class-action lawsuit so they could all win or lose in a single trial.
Woodrum agreed, and so did the Georgia Court of Appeals. That prompted Georgia-Pacific’s attorneys to ask that the Supreme Court reverse the class action.
Monday, both sides got to make their arguments to the seven, top-court justices. Arguing for the paper company, David Hudson said just because everyone in the proposed class owns land near the mill doesn’t mean they have the same circumstances in the courtroom.
“Let’s assume Mr. Ratner, who lives right across from the mill, let’s assume he proves that the (gas release) had an impact on his pocket. He proves that at the trial,” Hudson said. “He cannot prove that for a piece of property that’s half a mile away that’s a vacant field. He can’t prove that on a piece of property that’s just growing timber. He cannot prove the impact on a house that’s 50 years old and was already there (before the mill.) All of those determinations have to be done one by one in individual trials.”
But John Bell Jr., the attorney for the suing property owners, said separate trials for each parcel would waste the court’s time.
“It’s no different than if one person owned all these properties,” he said, adding that each would be appraised and a figure set for the damages like in a condemnation case.
He said that his firm and Hudson’s law firm have opposed each other in similar class-action lawsuits and that it wasn’t hard to determine what each property owner was due.
Bell said the gas is corrosive that it has destroyed the copper tubing in air conditioning units, many that Georgia-Pacific replaced in exchange for an agreement not to sue.
“If it can eat up copper and metal, it is certainly not something I want on my land,” he said.
Hudson told the justices that the company tried to help the property owners.
“Every time Georgia-Pacific repaired an air conditioner, it got a release from damages,” he said. “There are questions about whether or not many of these property owners even have a claim to be in this case.”
Justice David Nahmias, who spent most of his legal career as a federal prosecutor prior to joining the Supreme Court, challenged Bell about the mechanics of trying a case with plaintiffs in different circumstances. But Justice Carol Hunstein, who as a superior court judge had tried many condemnation cases, jumped in to help explain Bell’s reasoning.
Four of the justices, like Hunstein, were trial judges, while the other three were not. As they deliberate privately, they normally share their experiences as well as debate legal points, but it’s less often that they do it during oral arguments.