In a long-awaited decision issued on October 10, 2006, a federal court in Alabama granted defendants summary judgment on a claim of civil conspiracy in Lynn v. Amoco, No. 2:96cv940-MHT, 2006 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 74156. The case was filed in 1996 as a putative nationwide class action purportedly brought on behalf of all owners of properties near contaminated service stations across the country. Plaintiffs charged that the oil industry had concealed the extent of leaking gasoline storage systems and suppressed technology that could have prevented leaks and reduced contamination. Plaintiffs originally filed the case in state court in Coosa County, Alabama, where a state judge certified the putative class on the day the case was filed, before defendants were notified of the complaint. Defendants removed the case to federal court and succeeded in vacating the class certification.
“The conspiracy claim was the glue plaintiffs sought to apply to bind all the defendants together and make all the major oil companies liable for leaks at any station across the country,” said Wallace King partner Rick Wallace. “The glue did not hold. The claim failed.”
The original complaint named 19 oil companies as defendants and alleged that all of them had joined in an elaborate conspiracy dating back to the 1970s. In the early stages of the litigation, 12 defendants were dismissed (including some of the Wallace King clients Arco, Unocal and Star Enterprise). Seven defendants remained in the case (some of which have merged since the case began): Amoco, BP, Chevron, Exxon, Mobil and Wallace King clients Shell and Texaco. In 2001, those remaining defendants moved for summary judgment on the conspiracy claim. As Judge Myron Thompson wrote in his recent opinion, “Discovery in this case has been extensive. The record filed with the court is considerable. However, the plaintiffs have not satisfied their burden of coming forward with evidence that would enable a reasonable factfinder to conclude that the defendants conspired together as the plaintiffs have alleged.”
The Court thoroughly and carefully analyzed the extensive record including reams of contemporaneous documents spanning two decades, the testimony of numerous witnesses, and reports of experts on both sides. Despite drawing reasonable inferences in favor of the plaintiffs, the Court found no evidence of the alleged conspiracy. As Judge Thompson put it:
None of the evidence suggests that the defendants reached the agreements that the plaintiffs have alleged; none of the plus factors that the plaintiffs have raised indicate that the defendants were not acting in their individual as opposed to joint interests; and finally, and most tellingly, none of the evidence suggests that the defendants needed to conspire together to act as the plaintiffs have alleged: all of the conduct, with the exception, perhaps, of those activities involved in lobbying the government, could easily be undertaken by each defendant acting alone, without agreement or cooperation with the other defendants. The plaintiffs have been afforded ample opportunity to develop tevidence o support their conspiracy theory. They have not done so.
According to Wallace, “the plaintiffs wove an elaborate theory of conspiracy, but it proved to be nothing more than a theory, which the Court unraveled.” Wallace and partner Tony King led the effort for the firm’s clients Shell and Texaco. Friends and colleagues at Kirkland & Ellis, McDermott Will and & Emery, Fulbright & Jaworski, Bradley Arant, and Maynard Cooper & Gale represented the other defendants.