<">Fairness" and Joint and Several Liability in Government Cost Recovery Actions Under CERCLA

Three recent courts of appeals decisions have limited the imposition of joint and several liability on potentially responsible parties (PRPs) under CERCLA. The Alcan decisions of the Second and Third Circuits allowed PRPs to avoid joint and several liability through a back-door defense of lack of causation, while the third decision, involving Bell Petroleum Services, Inc. , offered PRPs the opportunity to avoid liability by the presentation of evidence the permitted a rough approximation of each PRP's contribution to a single harm. The soundness of these decisions is examined, arguing that the courts improperly used judicial notions of