Trial
03/05/25 –
A California state court jury heard opening statements last week in a lawsuit filed by the residents of a Los Angeles-area artist colony claiming the soil beneath their homes is contaminated with carcinogenic chemicals, and the full trial is being webcast gavel-to-gavel by Courtroom View Network.
Plaintiffs living in the Santa Fe Art Colony, an artist community founded in the early 1980s, allege property owners and environmental consultants should be found liable for injuries they claim to have suffered from exposure to toxic chemicals known as volatile organic compounds or VOCs.
The current property owners argue that they informed the residents in 2018 when purchasing the property that perchloroethylene (PCE) and trichloroethylene (TCE) vapors were present in the soil, but that the statute of limitations for any related claims had expired when the plaintiffs filed their lawsuit in 2022. However the plaintiffs maintain they only filed the lawsuit after uncovering evidence a previous property owner was also aware of the chemical risk but allegedly withheld that information from tenants.
