Kansas City, Mo. — Without admitting any wrongdoing or liability, a Kansas City engineering firm has preliminarily agreed to pay $10 million to a group of northwest Missouri farmers who claimed that fertilizer containing hexavalent chromium from a tanning operation damaged their property. In a prepared statement, Burns & McDonnell Engineering, which provided technical consulting to Prime Tanning, acknowledged it had reached an agreement in the class-action suit “to avoid further court costs and distraction from the company’s business.” Burns & McDonnell had acted as a technical consultant to Prime Tanning. Prime Tanning and an affiliated company, Wismo Chemical Corp., were originally named in the complaint, but were dismissed because of bankruptcy proceedings, leaving the engineering firm as the sole defendant. The settlement was reached Jan. 6, avoiding a three-week trial before Buchanan County Circuit Judge Randall Jackson. Earlier, the Missouri Department of Natural Resources and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency performed an investigation and concluded that the application of Prime Tanning fertilizer did not pose a health concern and that no clean-up of the land was necessary. But the plaintiffs argued that the agencies should have used different screening levels and criteria in their evaluation, and that the properties to which the fertilizer was applied have, in fact, been devalued. Judge Jackson, who has given the settlement “preliminary approval,” is allowing time for the plaintiffs to either opt out or object to the settlement before another hearing on May 7. If the plaintiffs choose to opt out of the class group, individual civil suits can be filed against the company, he told the local press.
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