For the past several years, a community of approximately 1000 residents who live within about a 3 mile radius of the Sunshine Canyon Landfill, which is operated by Republic Waste's California subsidiary BFIC, have been involved in a class action lawsuit against the SCL-BFIC, which company is contracted by the Los Angeles City and County. Two lawyers Liddle and Coulson were the litigating/settlement attorney's representing us against the "Big Guns" and huge money of the Republic Waste conglomerate. I and 5 other persons, including some of us who had legal experience and/or were lawyers themselves, were the NAMED/LEAD PLAINTIFFS in this case, and it was a very long drawn out case getting into the engineering and maintenance of landfills, generally and this landfill specifically. We as lawyers and the named plaintiffs in this case, literally worked our "butts" off to win this case, and WIN WE DID. This was a case of David and Goliath, and we and Liddle & Dubin, with Mr. Coulson, were the ones holding the slingshot and taking the Republic Goliath down with what is probably the biggest landfill settlement that I know of. Steven LIddle & Nick Coulson were our litigating attorneys in this case, and they were going against Bruin & Beck, who had unlimited funding, and as lawyers, THEY HAD OTHER LAWYERS AS THEIR CO-CHAIR/PARALEGALS IN THIS CASE ... so this case was Liddle & Coulson against a large crew of lawyers and a barrage of so-called experts, who in the end KNEW THEY WOULD LOOSE THIS CASE IN COURT and were forced to settle for A HUGE AMOUNT OF MONEY ... Keeping in mind that NO ONE IS EVER SATISFIED ON BOTH SIDE OF A SETTLEMENT, AND THAT IS THE NATURE OF A SETTLEMENT ... from my point of view, I give Mr. Liddle and Mr. Coulson and their team VERY HIGH MARKS FOR WINNING THIS CASE ON A SMALL BUDGET COMPARED TO THE BIG REPUBLIC BANK!!!
I was chosen to be a Named/Lead Plaintiff in this case because I had and have been a Board Director for my Legends at Cascades Community of 176 Condos/Townhouses for years and knew my people and their situation relative to the Sunshine Canyon Landfill ... but as a named plaintiff in this case all plaintiffs in this case represented the larger community of 1000, as well as our local neighborhood, schools, churches, etc.
The task for this law case was to not only get damages for the residents who had suffered from stench odors coming from the landfill, but also to win a judgement from the court that the SCL-BFIC Landfill would have to invest millions back into the landfill to remedy the odor emission problem or so reads the court order.
I don't think any law firm could have done better. Stephen Beck read more