Acushnet v. Brittany ( 1999 )

USCA1 Opinion

                 United States Court of Appeals

                     For the First Circuit











No. 97-2138



      ACUSHNET COMPANY, AMTEL INCORPORATED, AVX CORPORATION,

      BERKSHIRE HATHAWAY INC., BRIDGESTONE/FIRESTONE, INC.,

                CHAMBERLAIN MANUFACTURING CORP.,

    COMMONWEALTH ELECTRICAL COMPANY, COMMONWEALTH GAS COMPANY,

       EMHART INDUSTRIES, INC., GOODYEAR TIRE & RUBBER CO.,

              PARAMOUNT COMMUNICATIONS INCORPORATED,

     TELEDYNE RODNEY METALS A DIVISION OF TELEDYNE INDUSTRIES

       INCORPORATED, AND UNITED DOMINION INDUSTRIES, INC.,



                     Plaintiffs, Appellants,



                                v.



       MOHASCO CORPORATION, MONOGRAM INDUSTRIES INC. D/B/A

        AMERICAN FLEXIBLE CONDUIT, NEW ENGLAND TELEPHONE &

  TELEGRAPH COMPANY, NORTEK, INC., AND OTTAWAY NEWSPAPERS, INC.,



                      Defendants, Appellees.









           APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT



                FOR THE DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS



           [Hon. Robert E. Keeton, U.S. District Judge]











                              Before



             Bownes and Cyr, Senior Circuit Judges,



                 and O'Toole*, District Judge.









     Stephen J. Brake, with whom David L. Ferrera and Nutter,

McClennen & Fish, LLP were on brief, for appellants.



     Gerald J. Petros, with whom Charles D. Blackman and Hinckley,

Allen & Snyder were on brief, for Monogram Industries and Nortek,

Inc., d/b/a American Flexible Conduit, appellees.



     George W. House, with whom V. Randall Tinsley and Brooks,

Pierce, McLendon, Humphrey & Leonard, L.L.P. were on brief, for

Mohasco Corporation, appellee.



     Deming E. Sherman, with whom Edwards & Angell, LLP, were on

brief, for Ottaway Newspapers, Inc., appellee.



     Seth D. Jaffe, with whom Robert S. Sanoff, Jeffrey L. Roelofs,

and Foley, Hoag & Eliot, LLP were on brief, for New England

Telephone & Telegraph Company, appellee.











September 15, 1999



































































______________________



     *Of the District of Massachusetts, sitting by designation.  BOWNES, Senior Circuit Judge.  This appeal stems from the

contamination and subsequent clean up of an area popularly known as

Sullivan's Ledge, located in New Bedford, Massachusetts.

Plaintiffs-appellants, collectively known as the Sullivan's Ledge

Group, are thirteen corporations which received notices from the

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency ("EPA") advising that the

government considered them responsible for the pollution of

Sullivan's Ledge under the Comprehensive Environmental Response,

Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980 ("CERCLA").  In the early

1990's, the group entered into consent decrees with EPA in which it

agreed to perform remediation at the site.

  Invoking § 9613(f) of CERCLA, the Sullivan's Ledge Group

thereafter filed the present action in federal court seeking

contribution from several parties not targeted by the EPA,

including defendants-appellees:  Mohasco Corporation; Monogram

Industries Inc. and Nortek Inc., doing business as American

Flexible Coduit ("AFC"); New England Telephone & Telegraph Company

("NETT"); and Ottaway Newspapers, Inc.

  The district court dismissed these contribution claims,

granting NETT's motion for summary judgment before trial, and

entering judgment as a matter of law for Mohasco, AFC, and Ottaway

at the close of plaintiffs' case-in-chief.  We affirm, but on

somewhat different grounds than the district court.  As we

understand it, the district court ruled principally that the

defendants deposited so little waste at the site that it could not

reasonably be said that they caused plaintiffs to incur response

costs.  To the extent that the court's ruling may be interpreted to

incorporate into CERCLA a causation standard that would require a

polluter's waste to meet a minimum quantitative threshold, we

disagree.  Nevertheless, we conclude that the record was

insufficient to permit a meaningful equitable allocation of

remediation costs against any of these defendants under § 9613(f).

                                I.

  Once a pristine and picturesque area well-suited for

swimming, hiking, and impromptu gatherings by local residents, over

the years Sullivan's Ledge became little more than an industrial

dumping ground for scrap rubber, waste oils, gas, combustion ash,

and old telephone poles.  Sullivan's Ledge was the source of smoke

dense enough periodically to obscure the visibility of drivers on

nearby roads; residents in the surrounding region commonly blamed

the pollution for diminished air quality.  The sludge became so

toxic, the refuse so thick, and the stench so overwhelming, that

city officials closed down the area in the 1970's.

  Eventually, the EPA identified a number of business

entities, or their successors-in-interest, which it believed were

legally responsible for the decades-long pollution at the site.  In

1991 and 1992, after lengthy negotiations, members of the

Sullivan's Ledge Group entered into two separate consent decrees

with the United States.  The decrees required them to implement a

remediation plan and, to some extent, shoulder the costs of

restoring the contaminated site to its non-hazardous state, without

foreclosing their right to seek contribution from any other

responsible parties.  They duly commenced clean up efforts in

compliance with the consent decrees, and, in turn, brought this

contribution action to recover some portion of the realized and

anticipated costs.

  Plaintiffs accused NETT of dumping the butts of old

telephone poles that had been treated with liquid creosote chock-

full of Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons ("PAHs").  They alleged

that Nortek and Monogram d/b/a AFC, a manufacturer of conduit and

lead-based cable, generated and discarded scrap cable containing

lead, copper, and zinc.  According to the complaint, New Bedford

Rayon, the predecessor-in-interest to Mohasco, deposited waste from

the manufacture of rayon filament thread containing, inter alia,

sodium hydroxide, copper, and sulfuric acid.  In rounding out the

cast of defendants, plaintiffs alleged that The New Bedford

Standard Times, the predecessor to Ottaway, generated and disposed

of ink sludge bursting with sulfuric acid, nitric acids, and

various metals.

  In due course, NETT moved for summary judgment.  Although

NETT conceded for purposes of the motion that it had discarded

utility pole butts containing PAHs at the site, NETT argued that

its waste added so few PAHs to the mix compared to the overall

quantity of PAHs found at Sullivan's Ledge that NETT could not

fairly be said to have contributed to the environmental harm or

"caused" any of the remediation expenses.

  The district court granted the motion during a hearing on

June 11, 1996, (followed by a more extensive opinion issued

July 24), ruling that NETT had proffered "uncontradicted expert

testimony asserting that NETT did not cause, and, in fact, could

not have caused the plaintiffs to incur any 'response costs.'"

Acushnet Co. v. Coaters Inc., 937 F. Supp. 988, 992 (D. Mass. 1996)

("Acushnet I").  Specifically, the district court stated that this

scientific evidence showed that the creosote-treated pole butts

could not have leached PAHs into the soil in an amount greater than

pre-existing background PAH levels and that other sources provided

the overwhelming proportion of PAH found at Sullivan's Ledge.

Because, according to the court, plaintiffs failed to adduce any

evidence directly challenging this expert testimony, the court

found no triable issue of fact as to causation and entered summary

judgment in favor of NETT.

  The remaining defendants proceeded to trial.  Upon the

completion of plaintiffs' case-in-chief, the district court

entertained dispositive motions.  Mohasco, AFC, and Ottaway moved

for judgment as a matter of law, arguing in substance that the

environmental harm at Sullivan's Ledge was divisible and that the

evidence was insufficient to permit a finding that the material the

defendants dumped at the site caused any response costs.  Ottaway

also argued that plaintiffs had failed to establish that its wastes

had actually been transported to Sullivan's Ledge.

  Ruling from the bench on December 2, 1996, the court

determined that, viewed in the light most favorable to plaintiffs,

the case against each of the three defendants suffered "primarily

from insufficiency of the evidence."  It found that "the evidence

the plaintiffs proferred against these three defendants . . . is so

dramatically below any conceivable appropriate formulation of the

[applicable legal] standard, that the outcome of judgment for these

defendants at this time is clear without resolving just where those

guidelines will ultimately leave the formulation."

  The court explained that, at most, plaintiffs had

succeeded in showing that two cubic yards of solid cable waste was

attributable to AFC, comprising no more than a fraction of the lead

and zinc found at Sullivan's Ledge:

    Looking at AFC as perhaps plaintiffs' best

  shot among the three, . . . at best, . . . a

  jury could not find that on an equitable

  basis, consistent with the Gore factors and

  with preceden[ts] interpreting the statute,

  AFC would not be responsible for more than one

  in 500,000th -- one in 500,000 share, and that

  that would translate . . . into one hundred

  dollars.  That demonstrates that we're so far

  below anything that could be classified as an

  equitable standard of determining shares of

  legal accountability, that anybody that low,

  any entity that low, ought to be kept out

  . . . .



For this reason, it concluded that the evidence at trial against

AFC "fails every version one might conceive of an 'equitable

factors' test."  Acushnet Co. v. Coaters, Inc., 948 F. Supp. 128,

139 (D. Mass. 1996) ("Acushnet II").

  As for Mohasco, the court found plaintiffs' evidence

against Mohasco even weaker than that against AFC.  Not only was

Mohasco's apparent share of the hazardous waste far smaller than

plaintiffs' contribution, plaintiffs' own witnesses conceded that

the types of hazardous substances attributable to Mohasco would not

"persist in the environment," and "would not have even reached the

site because of chemical reactions with other materials."  Id.

  In dismissing Ottaway from the litigation, the court said

little other than that the case against Ottaway was "obviously

weaker than plaintiffs' case against . . . either of these [other]

two defendants."

  Lest there be any doubt, the trial judge reiterated that

the Sullivan's Ledge Group's claims against these three defendants

failed "on two independent grounds":  first, the evidence was

insufficient to bring AFC, Mohasco, and Ottaway within the group

for which "the calculus of appropriate proportional shares" of

liability for response costs could be made "and, secondly, on

grounds of a lack of showing of causal connection with respect to

remediation costs."  See also Acushnet II, 948 F. Supp. at 139.

  The district court entered judgment accordingly.

Plaintiffs now appeal from each of the court's rulings.

                               II.

  CERCLA, as we have said on other occasions, sketches the

contours of a strict liability regime.  See, e.g., Millipore Corp.

v. Travelers Indem. Corp., 115 F.3d 21, 24 (1st Cir. 1997).  Broad

categories of persons are swept within its ambit, including the

current owner and operator of a vessel or facility; the owner or

operator of a facility at the time hazardous waste was disposed of;

any person who arranged for the transportation of hazardous

substances for disposal or treatment; and anyone who accepted

hazardous waste for transportation.  See 42 U.S.C. § 9607(a)(1)-

(4).  There are a few affirmative defenses available, see

§ 9607(b), but they are generally difficult to satisfy (they

include showing that the release or threat of release was caused

solely by an act of God or an act of war).  By and large, a person

who falls within one of the four categories defined in § 9607(a) is

exposed to CERCLA liability.

  While CERCLA casts the widest possible net over

responsible parties, there are some limits to its reach.  The

courts of appeals have generally recognized that "although joint

and several liability is commonly imposed in CERCLA cases, it is

not mandatory in all such cases."  In re Bell Petroleum Servs.,

Inc., 3 F.3d 889, 895 (5th Cir. 1993) (discussing import of

deletion of joint and several liability language from final version

of bill); see United States v. Alcan Aluminum Corp., 964 F.2d 252,

268 (3d Cir. 1992) ("Alcan I").

  In O'Neil v. Picillo, 883 F.2d 176 (1st Cir. 1989), we

embraced the Restatement (Second) of Torts approach in construing

the statute, stating that a defendant may avoid joint and several

liability if the defendant demonstrates that the harm is divisible.

In that event, damages should be apportioned according to the harm

to the environment caused by that particular tortfeasor.  Id. at

178-79; accord Dent v. Beazer Materials and Servs., 156 F.3d 523,

529 (4th Cir. 1998); United States v. Township of Brighton, 153

F.3d 307, 317-18 (6th Cir. 1998); United States v. Alcan Aluminum

Corp., 990 F.2d 711, 722 (2d Cir. 1993) ("Alcan II"); Alcan I, 964

F.2d at 268-70.  See generally Restatement (Second) of Torts § 433A

(1965).

  A responsible party, in turn, may bring an action for

contribution under § 9613(f) to recover a portion of costs from

"any other person who is liable or potentially liable under

§ 9607(a)."  The standard for contribution liability is the same as

that under § 9607(a), see Prisco v. A&D Carting Corp., 168 F.3d

593, 603 (2d Cir. 1999), but in resolving contribution claims, a

court may, in its discretion, "allocate response costs among liable

parties using such equitable factors as the court determines are

appropriate."  § 9613(f)(1).

  A plaintiff seeking contribution must prove that:

    1.  The defendant must fall within one of four

  categories of covered persons.  42 U.S.C.

  § 9607(a).



    2.  There must have been a "release or

  threatened release" of a hazardous substance

  from defendant's facility.  42 U.S.C.

  § 9607(a)(4); § 9601(14), (22).



    3.  The release or threatened release must

  "cause[] the incurrence of response costs" by

  the plaintiff.  42 U.S.C. § 9607(a)(4).



    4.  The plaintiff's costs must be "necessary

  costs of response . . . consistent with the

  national contingency plan."  42 U.S.C.

  § 9607(a)(4)(B); § 9601(23)-(25).



Dedham Water Co. v. Cumberland Farms Dairy, 889 F.2d 1146, 1150

(1st Cir. 1989) ("Dedham I").

  Generators whose waste has been deposited in the facility

from which there has been a release are presumptively responsible

for the response costs, subject to the opportunity to prove

(i) that the harm was solely caused by someone (or something) else

(see § 9607(b)) or (ii) that the harm they caused is divisible (see

O'Neil, 883 F.2d at 179), and subject further to the equitable

allocation of relative shares of responsibility in an action for

contribution (see § 9613(f)(1)).

  The parties do not dispute that Sullivan's Ledge is a

"facility" or that each of the defendants was a responsible person

within the meaning of § 9607(a).  Instead, they hotly contest the

correct legal standard by which one could be said to have "caused"

plaintiffs to incur remediation expenditures, and whether the

record was adequate to allow any meaningful award of response

costs.

                               III.

  The Sullivan's Ledge Group mounts a three-fold attack on

the district court's reasoning in resolving the respective motions.

Its arguments on appeal are broad-brushed in nature, focusing

almost entirely on the legal meaning of "causation" and CERCLA's

underlying policy goals.  First, plaintiffs insist that reading any

causal element into CERCLA is inconsistent with the principle of

strict liability.  Second, they contend that doing so would run

counter to the remedial purpose of CERCLA because, among other

things, it will let smaller polluters off the hook and discourage

responsible parties from entering into consent agreements with the

government.  Third, to the extent the district court may have

considered equitable factors in ruling in favor of Mohasco,

Ottaway, and AFC, plaintiffs claim that the court did so without

providing a "full and fair allocation trial" within the meaning of

section 9613(f).

  Defendants-appellees, for their part, contend that it

makes sense to say that a de minimis polluter has not caused a

responsible party to incur clean up costs; and that, in all events,

plaintiffs' contribution claims against them founder for a more

fundamental reason: the record did not permit a finding that each

should bear a meaningful share of the costs associated with

restoring Sullivan's Ledge.  In their view, these fatal weaknesses

in the plaintiffs' case justified judgment as a matter of law in

their favor.

  Each of the defendants stands on slightly different

terrain, having been dismissed from the action at various stages in

the proceedings.  We therefore proceed to analyze plaintiffs'

arguments within the context of addressing the trial court's

disposition of the claims lodged against each defendant.

  We affirm the district court's handling of NETT's summary

judgment motion, albeit based on a slightly different rationale than

the court's own.  Although the court initially framed it in terms

of causation (erroneously, we believe), a finding of no liability

on the part of NETT is nevertheless justified under the principle

of equitable allocation under § 9613(f).

  We have strong reservations about interpreting the

statute's causation element to require that a defendant be

responsible for a minimum quantity of hazardous waste before

liability may be imposed.  The text of the statute does not support

such a construction -- CERCLA itself does not expressly distinguish

between releases (or threats of releases) by the quantity of

hazardous waste attributable to a particular party.  At least on its

face, any reasonable danger of release, however insignificant, would

seem to give rise to liability.  On this point, the courts of

appeals are in unison.  See, e.g., A&W Smelter and Refiners, Inc.

v. Clinton, 146 F.3d 1107, 1110 (9th Cir. 1998); Alcan II, 990 F.2d

at 720; Alcan I, 964 F.2d at 260-63; Amoco Oil Co. v. Borden, Inc.,

889 F.2d 664, 669 (5th Cir. 1990); see also 42 U.S.C. § 9601(14)

(defining "hazardous substance" without mentioning minimum levels);

§ 9607(a) (employing broad "any person" language).

  To read a quantitative threshold into the language "causes

the incurrence of response costs" would cast the plaintiff in the

impossible role of tracing chemical waste to particular sources in

particular amounts, a task that is often technologically infeasible

due to the fluctuating quantity and varied nature of the pollution

at a site over the course of many years.

  Moreover, it would be extremely difficult, if not

impossible, to articulate a workable numerical threshold in defining

causation.  How low would a polluter's contribution to the mix have

to be before a judge could find, with equanimity, that the polluter

was not a but-for "cause" of the clean up efforts?  Less than 0.5%

or 1%?  We do not see how such a line, based on the quantity or

concentration of the hazardous substance at issue, can be drawn on

a principled basis in defining causation.  To even begin down that

path, we feel, is to invite endless confusion.

  Our own decisions provide no basis for such an approach.

There is only one case in which we held that clean up efforts were

not carried out because of a defendant's dumping: where a water

treatment plant had been designed well before its planners acquired

knowledge that the defendant might have released hazardous waste

into the environment.  We found that, to the extent that the

plaintiff incurred costs in connection with the planning and design

of the treatment facility before it became aware of possible

pollution by the defendant, it had not responded to any threatened

future releases, but had only spent money to address the actual

contamination of the site.  Accordingly, we held in Dedham II that

such expenditures were not "caused" by a threatened release from the

defendant's facility.  See 972 F.2d at 460-61.

  That, however, is the only situation in which we have

found an insufficient causal nexus between a defendant and the

remediation expenditures.  And we have never discussed CERCLA

causation in quantitative terms.  To satisfy the causal element, it

is usually enough to show that a defendant was a responsible party

within the meaning of 9607(a); that clean up efforts were undertaken

because of the presence of one or more hazardous substances

identified in CERCLA; and that reasonable costs were expended during

the operation.  To the extent that the district court held that

some minimal quantity of hazardous waste must be involved before a

defendant may be held to have "caused" the expenditure of response

costs, it was mistaken.  See O'Neil, 883 F.2d at 179 n.4 (expressly

rejecting, in a related context, the argument that one must

demonstrate that defendant was a "substantial" cause of the

contamination before CERCLA liability attaches).

  This does not mean, however, that the de minimis polluter

must necessarily be held liable for all response costs.  The

approach taken by the Second Circuit is instructive.  In Alcan II,

990 F.2d 711 (2d Cir. 1993), the Second Circuit reaffirmed the

Restatement (Second) of Torts approach to fleshing out the scope of

CERCLA liability, holding that where environmental harms are

divisible, a defendant may be held responsible only for his

proportional share of the response costs.  In extending the

principle a half-step, the Second Circuit went on to say that:

    [A defendant] may escape any liability for

  response costs if it either succeeds in proving

  that its [waste], when mixed with other

  hazardous wastes, did not contribute to the

  release and cleanup costs that followed, or

  contributed at most to only a divisible portion

  of the harm.



Id. at 722.  The court emphasized that this particular defense was

limited to situations where a defendant's "pollutants did not

contribute more than background contamination and also cannot

concentrate."  Id.  It acknowledged that causation was, in some

sense, "being brought back into the case – through the backdoor,

after being denied entry at the frontdoor – at the apportionment

stage."  Id.  Nevertheless, the court concluded that a defendant who

successfully meets its burden can "avoid liability or contribution."

Id. at 725.  The Alcan II panel took great pains to leave questions

of liability, including the divisibility of environmental harm, and

equitable apportionment of clean up expenses, to the sound

discretion of the trial judge to be handled in the manner and order

he or she deems best.  Id. at 723.  We think the Second Circuit had

it right.

  We therefore hold that a defendant may avoid joint and

several liability for response costs in a contribution action under

§ 9613(f) if it demonstrates that its share of hazardous waste

deposited at the site constitutes no more than background amounts

of such substances in the environment and cannot concentrate with

other wastes to produce higher amounts.  This rule is not based on

CERCLA's causation requirement, but is logically derived from

§ 9613(f)'s express authorization that a court take equity into

account when fixing each defendant's fair share of response costs.

We caution, however, that not every de minimis polluter will elude

liability in this way.  As always, an equitable determination must

be justified by the record.

  There are several reasons why, after all is said and done,

an otherwise responsible party may be liable for only a fraction of

the total response costs or escape liability altogether.  In the

first place, § 9613(f) expressly contemplates that courts will take

equity into account in resolving contribution claims.  We have in

the past suggested that while a defendant in a direct EPA

enforcement action invoking the divisibility of harm defense bears

an "especially heavy burden," a defendant in a contribution

proceeding seeking to limit his liability has a "less demanding

burden of proof" by virtue of the equitable considerations that come

immediately into play.  In re Hemingway Transp., Inc., 993 F.2d 915,

921 n.4 (1st Cir. 1993); see also O'Neil, 883 F.2d at 183 (stating

that a defendant's burden is "reduced" in a contribution action).

A court, in evaluating contribution claims under § 9613(f), is "free

to allocate responsibility according to any combination of equitable

factors it deems appropriate."  O'Neil, 883 F.2d at 183.  Accord FMC

Corp. v. Aero Indus., Inc., 998 F.2d 842, 846-47 (10th Cir. 1993);

Environmental Transp. Sys., Inc. v. ENSCO, Inc., 969 F.2d 503, 509

(7th Cir. 1992).  In an appropriate set of circumstances, a

tortfeasor's fair share of the response costs may even be zero.  See

PMC, Inc. v. Sherwin-Williams Co., 151 F.3d 610, 616 (7th Cir. 1998)

(a party's "spills may have been too inconsequential to affect the

cost of cleaning up significantly, and in that event a zero

allocation would be appropriate") (Posner, J.), cert. denied, 119

S. Ct. 871 (1999); O'Neil, 883 F.2d at 183 (same).

  In the second place, there is nothing to suggest that

Congress intended to impose far-reaching liability on every party

who is responsible for only trace levels of waste.  Several courts,

albeit taking different paths to a similar result, have rejected the

notion that CERCLA liability "attaches upon release of any quantity

of a hazardous substance."  Licciardi v. Murphy Oil USA, 111 F.3d

396, 398 (5th Cir. 1997) (quoting Amoco Oil, 889 F.2d at 670)

(emphasis in original; see e.g., PMC, 151 F.3d at 616; Gopher Oil

Co. v. Union Oil Co. of Cal., 955 F.2d 519, 527 (8th Cir. 1992).

  Third, allowing a CERCLA defendant to prevail on issues

of fair apportionment, even at the summary judgment stage, is

consistent with Congress's intent that joint and several liability

not be imposed mechanically in all cases.  Permitting a result that

is tantamount to a no-liability finding is in keeping with the

legislative goal that clean up efforts begin in a speedy fashion and

that litigation over the details of actual responsibility follow.

In fact, to require an inconsequential polluter to litigate until

the bitter end, we believe, would run counter to Congress's mandate

that CERCLA actions be resolved as fairly and efficiently as

possible.  On the whole, the costs and inherent unfairness in

saddling a party who has contributed only trace amounts of hazardous

waste with joint and several liability for all costs incurred

outweigh the public interest in requiring full contribution from de

minimis polluters.

  Plaintiffs complain that any consideration of causation

is at odds with CERCLA's objectives and would discourage responsible

parties from entering into consent decrees.  Because we ground the

quantum inquiry solidly in § 9613(f), we are satisfied their

prophesy will not come to pass.  The ultimate failure of a

contribution claim because someone did only a negligible amount of

harm does not impede enforcement by the EPA or frustrate any of

CERCLA's objectives.

                                A.

  Relying on favorable case law from the Second and Third

Circuits, NETT attempted to prove that it contributed only trace

amounts of hazardous waste to Sullivan's Ledge.  At the summary

judgment stage, once a movant has offered evidence showing that

there is no dispute as to any material fact and that he is entitled

to judgment as a matter of law, the non-moving party must come

forward with sufficient evidence to create a triable issue of fact;

if he fails to do so, that is the end of the matter.  See Fed. R.

Civ. P. 56.

  In its motion for summary judgment, NETT contended that

"it is beyond material dispute that no wastes disposed of by [NETT]

. . ., even when considered with wastes disposed by other persons,

could have contributed to the environmental harm at the Site or to

the incurrence of response costs" and therefore "such wastes cannot

be the basis for the imposition of any liability" upon it.  As the

moving party, NETT undertook the burden of satisfying the court that

its motion ought to be granted.

  It offered extensive expert evidence to the effect that

the concentration of PAHs from NETT telephone poles, if in fact such

poles were left at the site, was negligible.  In a series of

reports, Dr. John Tewhey estimated that some 335,000 pounds of PAHs

were disposed of at Sullivan's Ledge, confirmed that the Sullivan's

Ledge Group was responsible for most of this pollution, and stated

that PAHs from telephone pole butts could have added no more than

negligible amounts to existing PAHs in the surrounding region.  He

stated that PAH levels in soil samples from areas near where utility

poles were located revealed the same amount of PAH found in many

popular foods.

  We have already rejected the district court's reasoning

inasmuch as it may have been rooted in a theory of causation that

required some quantitative threshold.  But even if NETT may be said

to have caused plaintiffs to incur response costs, plaintiffs failed

to rebut NETT's evidence showing that it should bear no more than

a de minimis share of the remediation expenditures under § 9613(f).

NETT essentially offered evidence tending to show that its equitable

share would amount to zero; plaintiffs gave only a non-responsive

rejoinder, mostly by insisting (wrongly) that causation is

irrelevant.

  Questions of causation and appropriate equitable

allocation of response costs involve quintessential issues of fact.

See Dedham II, 972 F.2d at 457.  But we see nothing especially

onerous about requiring the Sullivan's Ledge Group to come forward

with admissible evidence where a defendant has fairly raised the

issues.  See Amoco Oil, 889 F.2d at 667-68 (approving use of summary

judgment to hone trial-worthy issues in multi-defendant CERCLA

cases).  All that need be done to survive that stage is to submit

admissible evidence sufficient to point up a factual dispute.  It

is no different than asking a plaintiff to proffer some evidence as

to damages where a defendant has claimed in summary judgment papers

that the plaintiff has, in fact, suffered no compensable harm.

Given the Sullivan's Ledge Group's failure to meet its burden in

this regard, the trial court properly entered judgment for NETT.

  We turn now to the district court's rulings in favor of

AFC, Mohasco, and Ottaway.

                                B.

  As a threshold matter, there is some slight confusion as

to whether the trial judge's decision for these defendants was based

on Rule 50 (judgment as a matter of law) or Rule 52 (findings of

fact and conclusions of law after a bench trial).  On the one hand,

he explicitly stated that he was viewing the evidence in the light

most favorable to the plaintiffs, the usual standard for Rule 50

motions; he also impaneled a jury to resolve certain factual

matters, raising the added question whether Rule 52 would even be

appropriate.  See Fed. R. Civ. P. 52(a) (applicable to actions

"tried upon the facts without a jury or with an advisory jury").

On the other hand, the judge also spoke in terms of making "findings

of fact and conclusions of law."

  Although the court flirted with the prospect of entering

judgment by way of Rule 52 (saying, "whichever way I went about it,

it would come about the same"), we think it sufficiently clear that

the court intended to employ judgment as a matter of law as its

principal lens for viewing plaintiffs' claims.  See App. at 05812

("I am calling them Rule 50 judgments.").  Because we conclude that

the trial judge engaged the gears of Rule 50, we scrutinize his

legal conclusions de novo.  Plaintiffs' evidence must be viewed in

the light most favorable to them, and all reasonable inferences from

the record must be drawn to their advantage.  See Koster v. Trans

World Airlines, Inc., __ F.3d __, No. 98-1757, 1999 WL 396023, at

*2 (1st Cir. June 21, 1999).

  We affirm the judgment on the basis that the evidence was

inadequate to permit a rational factfinder to make a quantifiable

allocation of response costs to AFC, Mohasco, or Ottaway under

§ 9613(f).  See  Hodgens v. General Dynamics Corp., 144 F.3d 151,

173 (1st Cir. 1998) ("We will affirm a correct result reached by the

court below on any independently sufficient ground made manifest by

the record.").

  While no precise allocations were made in this case, a

trial court's perspective is nevertheless instructive as to the

equitable considerations most relevant to the dispute at hand.

Here, the court found the respective quantities of hazardous

materials attributable to each defendant, the toxicity of the

respective wastes, and their durability to be highly relevant to

fixing an equitable share.  Within this general framework, the court

assessed the Sullivan's Ledge Group's evidence and found it

inadequate.  We agree.

  Plaintiffs' evidence at trial tended to show that AFC was

responsible for hazardous waste at Sullivan's Ledge on a scale

"thousands of times less than the remaining contribution of others";

that, in terms of sheer mass, the two cubic yards of solid waste

attributable to AFC constituted an insignificant amount of pollution

when compared to over one million cubic yards of waste found at

Sullivan's Ledge; that the remediation plan was largely driven by

the presence of hazardous substances other than copper and zinc; and

that the materials attributable to AFC was not as toxic as the other

substances discovered at the site, namely, PAHs, Volatile Organic

Compounds, and Polychlorinated Biphenyls.  Taking at face value

plaintiffs' own estimates of the costs of remediation, AFC's share

of response costs, in the most generous formulation, would amount

to no more than 1/500,000 of $50 million amounting to less than

$100.

  Two main factors underlay the trial court's ruling in

favor of Mohasco:  (1) Plaintiffs' evidence against Mohasco was far

weaker than that against AFC; and (2) undisputed scientific

testimony by plaintiffs' own experts that hazardous substances

attributed to Mohasco "would not persist in the environment."

  As for Ottaway, beyond the small amount of material

attributable to its predecessor-in-interest, The New Bedford

Standard Times, plaintiffs' evidence actually linking The New

Bedford Standard Times to the ink waste at Sullivan's Ledge was thin

at best.

  On appeal, plaintiffs make no real effort to challenge the

court's characterization of their evidence or of each defendant's

apparent equitable share of the clean up expenditures.  Eschewing

a direct attack on the factual bases for the court's ruling, they

instead make a series of arguments aimed at the court's legal

reasoning and the general format of the proceedings.

  They first suggest that equitable determinations played

no role in the court's decision and therefore provide an inadequate

ground for affirmance.  Even a cursory examination of the record

puts this argument to rest.  The court repeatedly referred to the

equitable factors it found most salient, and discussed the weight

of the evidence as to each of these factors.  While the judge was

not making specific allocations, it is plain to us he was holding

that, in light of the equitable factors he would apply should he

make explicit findings, plaintiffs' evidence showed too little

pollution to justify compelling defendants to take on any meaningful

share of the response costs.  We read him to say that if he had to

make an allocation for AFC, Mohasco, and Ottaway, the evidence

dictated that each of their shares for response costs would be zero.

The court's reasoning is therefore sufficiently transparent as to

provide a basis for affirmance.  We add that, even if the trial

court's explanations were less than lucid (which they are not), we

would still have the power to affirm on any ground apparent on the

face of the record.  See Mesnick v. General Elec. Co., 950 F.2d 816,

822 (1st Cir. 1991) ("An appellate panel is not restricted to the

district court's reasoning but can affirm a summary judgment on any

independently sufficient ground.").

  Plaintiffs next argue that the trial court erroneously

presumed them liable for response costs in violation of 42 U.S.C.

§ 9622(d)(1)(B) (providing that execution of consent decree in

connection with CERCLA enforcement "shall not be considered an

admission of liability").  This, they argue, improperly imposed on

plaintiffs a burden they should not have been required to bear,

namely, that of proving their own non-liability.  This argument,

too, is easily rejected.  The judge made it perfectly clear that all

of the parties were starting "on equal ground," that he "was not

assuming that anybody has any special burdens in this case," and

that he was "not drawing [an adverse] inference" from the consent

decrees.  Although the court did mention the "fundamental principle"

that injuries be left where they lie unless judicial intervention

is warranted, that is simply another way of saying that plaintiffs

at all times had the burden of proving their contribution claims.

  There is one final matter to be untangled.  The Sullivan's

Ledge Group suggests that insofar as the trial judge purported to

make equitable findings under § 9613(f), it did so prematurely.

Plaintiffs insist that a remand is warranted so that a full and fair

hearing may be held before the court can accurately allocate the

response costs among each of the liable parties.

  We are aware that a specific allocation cannot logically

be made until a defendant has been deemed liable as a responsible

party, for contribution may only be obtained from joint tortfeasors.

Nevertheless, we are mindful of the complex nature of these kinds

of lawsuits.  District courts have considerable latitude to deal

with issues of liability and apportionment in the order they see fit

to bring the proceedings to a just and speedy conclusion.  See Alcan

II, 990 F.2d at 723.  CERCLA does not demand a bifurcated trial on

this score, nor have we insisted that the many knotty issues that

arise in the typical CERCLA action be resolved in any particular

chronological order.

  On this record, we find no abuse of discretion in the

court's failure to make more detailed findings or to hold a separate

allocation hearing.  Nothing in the record suggests that plaintiffs

complained about the unified nature of the § 9613(f) proceedings.

If plaintiffs felt truly hampered by the structure of the trial,

they should have interposed a timely objection.  We also think it

telling that they make no effort to describe the additional material

it would present to the trial judge were we to order a remand.  We

will not order a remand when it is likely to be an empty exercise.

Finally, the fact that the court received the Sullivan's Ledge

Group's evidence over the course of seventeen days convinces us that

plaintiffs had every opportunity to submit any and all relevant

evidence at its disposal on the issues of liability and equitable

apportionment.

  Affirmed.  Costs awarded to defendants-appellees.