United States v. American Commercial Lines, No. 13-30358 (5th Cir. 2014)
Annotate this CaseACL contracted with ES&H and USES following an oil spill to provide cleanup services. After ACL failed to pay the outstanding amounts owed to the companies, the United States paid the balance out of the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund and then filed suit against ACL to recover its payments. The court concluded that the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 (OPA), 33 U.S.C. 2701 et seq., provides the exclusive source of law for an action involving a responsible party's liability for removal costs governed by OPA and held that ACL does not have a cause of action against the spill responders who exercised their statutory right to file claims with the Fund after ACL failed to timely pay their claims. Accordingly, the court affirmed the district court's dismissal of ACL's claims against ES&H and USES as displaced under OPA.
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