California consumers continue to benefit from improved air quality and fuel efficiency under an innovative 2008 antitrust settlement with Unocal Corporation, devised by Berman DeValerio Partner Christopher T. Heffelfinger, that applied the settlement proceeds to a series of environmental initiatives.
Berman DeValerio is a co-lead counsel in the lawsuit, which had accused Unocal, a California oil company, of illegally manipulating California’s reformulated gasoline regulations prescribing low-emission clean-air standards, resulting in overcharges for the state’s consumers. Because of the difficulty of distributing the proceeds of the settlement to individual affected consumers, the court agreed to approve a “cy pres” settlement that aimed to improve air quality for all California consumers.
Money from the $48 million settlement has gone to a variety of programs to help local governments deploy electric vehicles, buy electric plug-in cars and alternative fuel vehicles, filter polluted air around schools, pay for alternative fueling stations, and train mechanics to maintain electric gas hybrid buses. The settlement also funded a program that paid people to repair or replace old vehicles with newer ones that pollute less and use less fuel.
Mr. Heffelfinger, a co-lead counsel in the case, developed the idea of applying the cy pres funds to improving air quality or fuel efficiency. To implement the program, he and other plaintiffs’ counsel worked together for six years, at no additional legal expense to the class, to help implement and supervise completion of the effort. The lawyers were assisted by experienced cy pres administrators Brenda Drake, Carl Oshiro and Harry Snyder.
The settlement established two separate programs. The first, a repair/scrap program “designed to improve air quality and reduce emissions by reducing the number of high-emitting vehicles on California’s roads,” was completed in 2013. The second, an open grants program, awarded grants to six successful applicants demonstrating either fuel efficiency or clean air benefit, was completed earlier this year. Residual funds remained in both programs.
On May 8, 2015, Mr. Heffelfinger and other plaintiffs’ attorneys submitted a progress report, based on information provided by the administrators, together with an application to the Hon. Christina A. Snyder of the U.S. District Court for Central California, for the remaining funds to be reallocated to the Bay Area Clean Air Foundation. On May 13, Judge Snyder approved plaintiffs’ counsel’s accompanying framework to distribute the $2.15 million left in the fund.
The report said that the second component of the settlement, an open grants program, “has delivered and continues to deliver a broad range of clean air and fuel efficiency benefits to California consumers.”
According to the report, the open grants component funded nine individual programs, including:
- Creation of a comprehensive guide, white paper and technical supplement to help local governments deploy electric vehicles in their communities;
- Ten electric plug-in cars used in the San Francisco Bay Area’s City CarShare fleet, which reduced greenhouse gas emissions by 11.75 tons and inspired City CarShare to increase its plug-in fleet;
- A vehicle rebate program by the California Center for Sustainable Energy that bought and deployed 181 alternative fuel vehicles at San Diego International Airport, which resulted in fuel savings of nearly $1.5 million a year and significantly reduced emissions of carbon dioxide and oxides of nitrogen;
- Two programs to install high-performance air filtration systems in 12 schools impacted by diesel emissions and industrial pollution in San Bernardino, Riverside and Los Angeles County, helping more than 9,000 elementary and high school students;
- Completion of a compressed natural gas fueling station at a landfill in Alameda County that will displace an estimated 20 million gallons of diesel fuel and result in a 200,000 metric ton reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, a 1,526-ton reduction in oxides of nitrogen and a 30-ton reduction in soot over the next 20 years; and
- A program by the Southern California Regional Transit Training Consortium to develop coursework and train 688 transit mechanics on how to maintain electric gas hybrid buses in transit fleets across Southern California.
The case is In re Reformulated Gasoline (RFG) Antitrust & Patent Litigation, MDL Case No. 05-1671 (C.D. Cal.). The full Status Report and the judge’s Order are available here.
*In August 2017, our firm name changed to Berman Tabacco. Case references and content published before that date may refer to the firm under our prior name, Berman DeValerio.