Litigation

When an asset-seller sought to pass its responsibility to contribute to the cost to cleanup a landfill in West Chester, Ohio, to an asset-buyer, Borden, Inc. turned to Dinsmore for counsel and defense. In a bench trial with numerous witnesses and hundreds of thousands of documents, we convinced the court that the asset-seller retained the cleanup liability and that Borden did not assume the liability. Subsequently, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the decision in its entirety (OXY USA, Inc. v. Borden, Inc., 2007 U.S. App. LEXIS 694 (January 7, 2007)). Borden’s victory not only prevented the asset-seller from transferring its liability for the cost to clean up the landfill at issue in the case, but prevented the asset-seller from alleging that Borden was responsible for its cleanup obligations at any other site in the United States where any of the more than half a dozen facilities that were the subject of the sale may have sent waste for disposal.