Scottsdale Indemnity Co. v. Village of Crestwood Pays/Territoire États-Unis d'Amérique Type de cour Nationale - cour supérieure Date Mar 12, 2012 Source UNEP, InforMEA Nom du tribunal United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit Juge Posner, Wood and Hamilton. Numéro de référence Nos. 11-2385, 11-2556, 11-2583 Langue Anglais Sujet Déchets et substances dangereuses, Environnement gén. Mot clé Normes de qualité de l'eau Pollution des eaux douces/qualité des eaux douces Responsabilité/indemnisation Substances dangereuses Résumé In 1985 or 1986 Crestwood's mayor and other Village officials learned from state environmental authorities that one of the wells was contaminated by perc (PCEperchloroethylene, also known as tetrachloroethylene). Village officials promised the state authorities that the well would be used only in emergencies. But instead, for reasons of economy, the well continued to be used as a source of the daily Village water supply -- without disclosure to the Village's residents. The well remained in use until 2007, and not until 2009 was it sealed. Hundreds of Crestwood residents, having learned of the contamination of their water supply from a series of articles in the Chicago Tribune, sued the Village and past and present Village officials in an Illinois state court seeking damages for injury to health. In a parallel suit the State of Illinois seeks an injunction requiring the Village to finance "a site inspection to determine the nature and extent of contamination" and take "all necessary steps to remediate the contamination." All these suits are pending. Two insurers sue for a declaration that they have no duty either to defend a series of tort suits brought against their insureds (the Village of Crestwood, Illinois, and past and present Village officials) or to indemnify the insureds should the plaintiffs in those suits prevail. The district court, holding that the allegations in the tort complaints triggered the pollution exclusion, granted summary judgment for the insurers, precipitating the appeals, which are multiple because there are a number of different declaratory-judgment suits. The Appeals Court said, "The insureds might as well be arguing that because the Village has never manufactured perc it is responsible for none of the harms that dispersing perc might cause. That would be like a murderer arguing that his victim was killed not by him but by his gun. The Village "caused" the contamination of its water supply (it could have sealed the well a quarter of a century ago, when it discovered the well was contaminated) in a perfectly good sense of the word. Finally, in affirming the district court the Appeals Court indicates, "The insurers conceded at oral argument that the duty to defend would be activated if so enigmatic a complaint were allowed. The complaints actually filed, however, describe in copious detail the conduct giving rise to the tort suits, and in doing so inadvertently but unmistakably acknowledge the applicability of the pollution exclusion." Texte intégral COU-158387.pdf