Expert Witness Blog
New York Plainview Water District and its hydrology and ground water expert witnesses did not convince a state judge that oil companies should pay for clean up as a result of gas stations spills. Newsday.com also writes:
The lawsuit had drawn interest because it could have required ExxonMobil, Shell Oil and Cumberland Farms to pay for future pollution, even though contamination from leaking underground storage tanks had yet to reach the district’s wells. But Justice Kenneth A. Davis dismissed the case Wednesday in State Supreme Court, ruling that the district had failed to prove the spills, which contained the potentially carcinogenic fuel additive MTBE, posed a “real and imminent” threat to the wells. Davis’ decision followed weeks of exhaustive testimony during the summer from expert witnesses on local hydrology and various computer models used to predict whether the contamination was likely to hit Plainview’s wells. The judge agreed with the defendants’ argument that MTBE did not threaten the wells, a conclusion shared by the state Department of Environmental Conservation.