State, Dept. of Environ. Protect. v. Ventron Corp.

The opinion of the Court was delivered by

POLLOCK, J.

This appeal concerns the responsibility of various corporations for the cost of the cleanup and removal of mercury pollution seeping from a forty-acre tract of land into Berry’s Creek, a tidal estuary of the Hackensack River that flows through the Meadowlands. The plaintiff is the State of New Jersey, Department of Environmental Protection (DEP); the primary defendants are Velsicol Chemical Corporation (Velsicol), its former Subsidiary, Wood Ridge Chemical Corporation (Wood Ridge), and Ventrón Corporation (Ventrón), into which Wood Ridge was…