CVN screenshot of defense attorney Thomas Vandenburg delivering his opening statement
Los Angeles, CA - A California state court jury heard opening statements last week in a lawsuit filed by the residents of a Los Angeles-area artist colony claiming the soil beneath their homes is contaminated with carcinogenic chemicals, and the full trial is being webcast gavel-to-gavel by Courtroom View Network.
Plaintiffs living in the Santa Fe Art Colony, an artist community founded in the early 1980’s, allege property owners and environmental consultants should be found liable for injuries they claim to have suffered from exposure to toxic chemicals known as “volatile organic compounds” or VOCs.
The current property owners argue that they informed the residents in 2018 when purchasing the property that perchloroethylene (PCE) and trichloroethylene (TCE) vapors were present in the soil, but that the statute of limitations for any related claims had expired when the plaintiffs filed their lawsuit in 2022. However the plaintiffs maintain they only filed the lawsuit after uncovering evidence a previous property owner was also aware of the chemical risk but allegedly withheld that information from tenants.
The full trial is being webcast both live and on-demand by CVN. Both monthly and annual subscribers to CVN’s online trial video library receive unlimited access to this current trial and hundreds of other civil trials in CVN’s video library featuring many of the top trial attorneys in the country.
In a somewhat unusual arrangement the defendants presented their opening statements first, beginning with an attorney for the current property owners, Matthew Weiner, detailing how PCE and TCE were used as degreasers in heavy industrial equipment, and describing the due diligence his clients undertook when they purchased the property in 2018.
He stressed to jurors that as soon as his clients became aware of the issue tenants were informed, and that remediation efforts began in 2019.
“It is undisputed that the tenants received this notice,” he said.
Representing CTEH, an environmental consulting firm brought in to evaluate the conditions at the property, attorney Teanna Buchner explained that they prepared the notice provided to tenants. She said her company even set up a hotline for residents to call with any related questions, but that no plaintiffs in the case ever utilized it.
“The CTEH fact sheet is complete, it’s accurate and it’s not misleading,” she emphasized.
Thomas Vandenburg, representing the previous property owners, said they reasonably relied on their own outside consultants at EFI Global who found that VOC vapors in the soil “may potentially” cause a health risk, and that they engaged in their own remediation efforts.
Central to his argument was the claim that while this was going on, and prior to the 2018 purchase, that posters warning tenants about the presence of toxic chemicals were placed in highly visible locations throughout the property.
Later Vandenburg said that a second warning sign was added providing even more specific information.
“You’ll hear testimony from numerous plaintiffs that they saw this warning sign, and that they understood this sign,” he said.
Representing the plaintiffs, attorney Christopher Madeksho told jurors that those signs did not convey nearly the same urgency or danger that the property owners supposedly knew about.
“The elevated soil vapor concentrates exceed carcinogenic levels,” he quoted from one of the reports. “This is what in May 2017 the owners knew.”
CVN screenshot of plaintiff attorney Christopher Madeksho delivering his opening statement
He urged jurors not to use the subsequent CTEH fact sheet as the starting point for the statute of limitations clock, since he argued it lacked the critical knowledge that formed the basis of their eventual lawsuit.
“You don’t just file a lawsuit,” he explained, detailing that first you have to gather the necessary evidence to support your claims.
He insisted clear, direct warnings about cancer risks were never properly communicated to tenants with the same urgency and alarm that the owners received, and that the evidence in trial supposedly showing this was intentionally withheld from plaintiffs should defeat the statute of limitations defense.
“None of this made it into that CTEH fact sheet,” Madeksho said. “You will learn there is no mention of cancer in the CTEH fact sheet at all.”
The first phase of this bifurcated trial is taking place before Judge David S. Cunningham III and is expected to take approximately two weeks to complete. If the defendants are found liable, a second phase with a different jury is expected sometime later this year.
The case is captioned The Estate of Julie Arnoff v. Art Colony Property LLC, et al, case number 22STCV19686 in Los Angeles County Superior Court.
E-mail David Siegel at dsiegel@cvn.com
