McCoy v. Gustafson

Opinion

RUSHING, P. J.

I. Introduction

In 1986, Margaret McCoy wrote a letter to the owners of the Grove Laundry in Pacific Grove, complaining that “black oil is seeping up between the laundry” and the house owned by Margaret and Edward McCoy on property downhill from the laundry (the downhill property). She asserted that it was the laundry’s “spill of black oil” and that they should clean it up.

The Blackwells, then owners of the laundry, made some efforts to clean up the oil contamination on the laundry property. After acquiring the laundry property in 1988, in 1993 M. Douglas Gustafson…