Los Angeles County will pay $6 million to settle with more than 24,000 people exposed to weeks of nauseating odors from a hydrogen sulfide gas buildup in the Dominguez Channel in Carson in 2021.
That’s about $250 per person, if the payouts were divided evenly.
The county Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday, March 17, in favor of the settlement as part of its consent calendar, a group of issues typically requiring no discussion and approved on a single vote.
The dozens of mass tort lawsuits alleged the county and its Flood Control District failed to properly manage the county-controlled Dominguez Channel, a 15.7-long stream stretching through Hawthorne, Carson and Torrance, after a warehouse fire burned through towering stacks of hand sanitizer and led to the runoff entering the storm drain system.
The approval comes roughly a month after a jury awarded $8.8 million in damages to two dozen Carson residents who sued the property owner and tenants. The owner, Prologis, is on the hook for about 7% of that total.
Another 13,750 plaintiffs are still waiting for their day in court in that case, however, and attorneys estimate the total verdict could exceed $1 billion if similar amounts are awarded in the future.
“The County of Los Angeles made a very wise decision in resolving the case pretrial,” said attorney Paul Kiesel, who represents about 8,000 clients and serves as liaison counsel on the litigation. “L.A. County is out of it completely at this point.”
The county’s settlement resolves all of the lawsuits against it at once and gives it a clean exit from the litigation. The county already has spent nearly $1.2 million on other costs, according to a case summary provided to the county Board of Supervisors.
The foul odor at issue in the lawsuits wafted through the South Bay for more than 10 weeks while county and the local air quality management district tried to determine its origins. Investigators originally pinned the smell on dead vegetation, before concluding the fire’s runoff had served as the catalyst.
The toxic mixture pooled in stagnant water in the channel, where it dissolved oxygen, rapidly killed off plants and spiked hydrogen sulfide gas levels in the surrounding communities.
A separate lawsuit filed by the county to recover its costs from the property owner and tenants is still pending.
L.A. County spent at least $54 million — with estimates as high as $143 million — to eliminate the stench. The county offered reimbursements to residents for air filters, purifiers and temporary relocation.