On the recordApril 17, 1996
the reason they spend so much time in court battling over liability, is that the current law as it is written has this so-called deep pockets provision in it. So if you contributed 1 percent of whatever is in that site, you could be liable for 100 percent. If you are caught having contributed that 1 percent and you are told that the other parties are not found liable, you are going to have to cough it all up, you are going to try your best to bring them all to court and fight over that liability forever. The result is the government spends the taxpayers' dollars in that courtroom, the private parties spend interminable amounts of time and money in that courtroom, and in the meantime the citizens out there waiting for the cleanup to occur wait and wait and wait, and the money is wasted and no cleanup occurs. That is what is wrong with this system. It lacks common sense.
Source
govinfo.gov
