The US Supreme Court agreed to use a Montana case involving a BP unit to consider shielding companies from environmental cleanup lawsuits that go beyond what federal regulators have ordered.
The justices will review a Montana Supreme Court decision that allowed a suit by property owners whose land was contaminated by arsenic discharged decades ago from a copper smelter in the western part of the state. The landowners are suing BP’s Atlantic Richfield, which acquired the smelter’s operator, Anaconda, in 1977.