98 Opportunity Landowners Settle 13-Year Arsenic Contamination Suit Against ARCO

The town of Opportunity, Montana sits roughly 70 miles southwest of Helena on land that spent nearly a century downwind of the Anaconda copper smelter. After the Washoe Smelter began operating in 1902, tall smokestacks dispersed emissions over a wider area, a tactic that reduced visible blight near the facility but spread arsenic, lead, cadmium, and zinc across more than 300 square miles of surrounding countryside. The company later completed its iconic 585-foot stack in 1918. The company also founded Opportunity as a housing community for smelter workers, placing families directly beneath the emissions plume. ARCO purchased the Anaconda Company in 1977 and inherited both the land and the liability.

After years of EPA testing that included soil sampling and urine tests on local children beginning in 2002, 98 Opportunity and Crackerville residents filed suit in April 2008. Their claims against ARCO, a BP America subsidiary, included common law trespass, nuisance, and strict liability. The plaintiffs sought restoration damages for a cleanup more thorough than the Superfund remedy already underway, with expert remediation plans valuing the necessary work between $38 million and $101 million.

Beck, Amsden and Stalpes of Bozeman, alongside Great Falls firm Lewis, Slovak and Kovacich, represented the plaintiffs. The case required sustained appellate work. The Montana Supreme Court issued a major ruling on September 1, 2015 (Christian v. Atlantic Richfield Co., 2015 MT 255), reversing a lower court summary judgment on statute-of-limitations grounds for nuisance, trespass, negligence, and strict liability claims. The court held that reasonable abatability, not mere continued migration of contaminants, was the key factor in determining whether plaintiffs' claims were time-barred. That ruling allowed the case to proceed to trial.

ARCO pursued the dispute to the U.S. Supreme Court, which heard argument in 2019 in Atlantic Richfield Co. v. Christian. That court ruled in 2020 that Montana state courts had authority over the plaintiffs' restoration claims even within a Superfund site, a decision that sent the case back to the state district court.

In early 2021, District Court Judge Katherine Bidegaray dismissed the case on a jointly filed motion after the parties reached a confidential settlement. Settlement terms were not disclosed. The case, filed in 2008, concluded after approximately 13 years of litigation.