Sugar processing plant can't dodge Bay Area resident's claims relating to foul odors

SAN FRANCISCO (CN) — A California sugar processing plant must face federal class action claims brought by a Crockett, California, resident who says the facility releases such foul odors that quality of life in his community is affected as homes are filled with the stench.

Senior U.S. District Judge Susan Judge Illston denied C&H Sugar, Inc.’s attempt to toss claims from plaintiff Freddy Gutierrez, who says the company’s processing facility in his town releases such noxious odors that he can’t enjoy his home or neighborhood. Illston found that Gutierrez plausibly claimed that the sugar facility’s odors forced him to keep his windows closed, stay out of his yard and avoid having any guests at his home.

C&H Sugar, Inc. owns and operates a sugar refinery and municipal wastewater treatment facility in the census-designated Crockett, California, a San Francisco Bay Area suburb. It offloads, stores and refines 800,000 tons of raw sugar annually. The facility treats wastewater from the sugar refining process, which produces a “waste sludge” and large quantities of hydrogen sulfide that is “highly odiferous” and permeates the surrounding residential areas, according to the complaint. Gutierrez says the company failed to control emissions from affecting his property and more than 2,200 nearby households.

In a motion to dismiss filed Sept. 22, C&H Sugar said Gutierrez had sufficiently demonstrated a substantial interference with his use of his property, and also claimed that the man will be unable to recover any damages because his claim is for a continuing nuisance. The defendant also opposed the claims being litigated as a class action, saying that each property owner in the area might be affected differently by any odors that exist.

Illston refused to dismiss the claims, saying in a 14-page order Wednesday that she could not, at this stage, side with the defendants that the loss of the plaintiff’s real property is a “purely economic loss” that would make it appropriate to dismiss the negligence claim.

The judge also weighed in on the defendant’s assertion that Gutierrez’s public nuisance claim should be dismissed because he hadn’t described an injury that would differ from one the general public experienced. She said that both sides cite “seemingly contradictory California Court of Appeal decisions” on whether a plaintiff must claim different damages than other members of the public in a class action.

“Tracing these cases back to the underlying California Supreme Court decisions, this court interprets the legal standard to be that a plaintiff who pleads personal injury or an injury to private property has pled an injury different in kind from that of the general public," the Clinton appointee said. “The court finds these to be sufficient factual allegations of personal or property injury to maintain the public nuisance claim at this pleading stage.”

Illston also refused to dismiss the plaintiff’s claims for nuisance outright on the grounds that the nuisance could be abated, as she has not yet determined if the facility’s odors could be fixed. She also disagreed with the defendant’s argument that the class allegations “should be stricken because the alleged claims require highly individualized inquiries and the class definition is arbitrary and overbroad.”

“The Ninth Circuit has cautioned that ‘[w]ere we to read Rule 12(f) in a manner that allowed litigants to use it as a means to dismiss some or all of a pleading … we would be creating redundancies within the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure’ because a Rule 12(b)(6) motion ‘already serves such a purpose.’” Illston said. “The suitability of proceeding as a class action in this case will be properly considered in a motion for (or against) class certification, based on an appropriate factual record.”

Attorneys for both sides did not immediately respond to requests for comment before press time.

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