Source: http://www.chron.com, February 20, 2015
By: Matthew Tresaugue
Attorneys for Harris County have asked for a new trial in the legal fight over industrial pollution in the San Jacinto River, saying the judge made numerous errors that prevented them from getting a fair hearing on their claims.
The motion for a new trial, filed this week, comes two months after a jury cleared Memphis-based International Paper Co. of any responsibility for the paper-mill waste that has fouled the river for decades.
Harris County had asked the jury to force International Paper to pay as much as $25,000 a day from February 1973 to March 2008 for allowing cancer-causing dioxins to spread into the river from three abandoned disposal pits along its banks near Channelview.
In the motion, the county claims a series of errors by state District Judge Caroline Baker prevented the jury from finding the company liable.
Baker, for example, told jurors that the company did not own the hazardous waste after it was placed into the pits in 1965 – a reversal of her rulings on the issue before and during the four-week trial.
International Paper was one of the county’s three targets in the case. The other two companies – McGinnes Industrial Maintenance Corp. and Waste Management Inc. – agreed to pay nearly $30 million in damages.