McCoy

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 demolished one of the buildings and had almost 560 tons of soil excavated from the laundry property, as monitored and approved by the Monterey County Health Department (the Health Department).

Because the downhill property has remained contaminated, in 2002 the McCoys filed this civil action against the current and former owners of the laundry property. As the jury was instructed in this case, to release fuel oil into a neighbor’s soil without consent is a trespass, and to interfere with the free use and enjoyment of a neighbor’s property by contaminating it is a nuisance.

California law classifies…