Some Refinery Foes Upset With Settlement : Lawsuit: Plaintiffs claimed Mobil's Torrance plant created health hazards. Several call their award too small and say terms of the pact should not be secret.

By DEBORAH SCHOCH

Dec. 27, 1994 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

The $2,500 check arrived in the mail weeks ago, but Dolores Kyle fumes that she has absolutely no intention of cashing it. Not for the holidays. Not ever.

She has tucked the check away with other remnants of the 4 1/2-year legal battle that she and hundreds of her neighbors waged against the Mobil Oil Corp. refinery in Torrance.

That battle recently concluded quietly, not with the fanfare of a public trial, but with a secret agreement. The settlement check issued to Kyle was dated Oct. 15. Ironically, that was only four days before a fiery explosion at the refinery injured 28 workers, spreading fresh fear among those who live alongside it.

Now, Kyle is filled with indignation--toward Mobil, toward Torrance city officials and toward her own attorneys for putting the brakes on a lawsuit she hoped would result in a court judgment requiring Mobil to make the refinery safer.

Changes in refinery safety may be part of the settlement--but that seems unlikely to ever be disclosed.

This, environmentalists say, is a sad consequence of settling high-profile policy disputes in secret: The public is deprived of what could be important information affecting thousands of people beyond the plaintiffs.

Corporations often request such secrecy out of concern that reports of a large settlement could prompt other people to sue in search a similar terms, legal experts say.

“I literally blew when I got that check. They settled that lawsuit, said how safe it was, how they’ve cleaned up,” sputtered Kyle, a 64-year-old Torrance cosmetologist and former charm school teacher. A refinery neighbor since 1956, she blames Mobil for her long-term breathing problems.

She pauses to wipe her screen door with a paper towel and then brandishes the paper to show the black smear. Soot from Mobil, she claims with disgust. The same soot blackens the fuzz on her home-grown peaches, she says. And if her peaches are black, what about her lungs?

In all, 610 refinery neighbors sued Mobil in early 1990 after a series of explosions and fires, claiming that the sprawling facility in north Torrance threatened their health and hurt their property values. They complained of sooty homes, nausea and respiratory problems. About 350 to 400 people remained in the case when it was settled.

Christopher Angelo, one of the attorneys who represented the residents, said all plaintiffs were notified in advance of the terms of the settlement and agreed to it. Kyle was the only plaintiff interviewed by The Times who said she did not sign the settlement. However, among other plaintiffs interviewed, reaction to the settlement was ambivalent. Some plaintiffs dismissed the payments as a pittance. Others said they accepted the money because they lost hope long ago of winning a legal wrestling match with an oil giant. Still others shrugged and said their lawyers did the best they could, and some declined to comment.

Most residents interviewed asked not to be identified by name, saying the settlement binds them to secrecy.

Although details of that settlement remain sketchy, a letter to residents from their attorney, obtained by The Times, indicates that Mobil agreed to pay $3 million and that residents were expected to receive $2,500 apiece.

Attorneys for Mobil and for the residents refused to confirm the amount of the settlement or discuss its terms. Refinery officials also refused comment beyond confirming that “the matter has been resolved.”

“There is a confidentiality agreement, and the clients are bound by it,” said Angelo.

Mobil’s lawyer, Ernest Getto, said the settlement contained “no admission of any kind.” Getto, a specialist in chemical exposure cases whose law firm, Latham & Watkins, has a large environmental practice, called the residents’ suit the largest he knows of that has been brought against the refinery. He said Mobil has never accepted responsibility for any health problems that residents might claim were caused by the refinery.

As for such problems as sooty homes, Getto said the Mobil refinery staff responds to residents’ complaints and tries to determine if the refinery could be a factor. But in the Torrance area, pinpointing a source can be difficult, he said.

“There’s a lot of industry down there, and a lot of manufacturing facilities,” he said.

In the past five years, Getto added, Mobil has invested significantly in safety and environmental improvements, and the refinery has won several recent safety awards.

“It’s a client that listens to the community,” he said.

The secrecy of the settlement especially riles some residents because of recent news reports that Torrance city officials months ago quietly altered the guidelines for evaluating the refinery’s use of a controversial chemical, hydrofluoric acid. The changes were made in connection with a separate lawsuit the city filed against Mobil. No public hearing was held.

“What’s the big, hidden secret?” said one plaintiff in the suit by the 610 residents against Mobil, referring to both his case and the city’s lawsuit. Although he received a $2,500 payment and would not agree to be quoted by name, he still objects to keeping the settlement confidential. “I don’t think that’s right--I think everyone should be entitled to know,” he said.

Torrance Councilman Dan Walker, a longtime critic of Mobil, wondered why a confidentiality agreement was necessary.

“Doesn’t it seem awful funny,” he said, “that when Mobil gives 350 people a couple of thousand dollars, they want it kept confidential--but when they donate $2,000 to some charity, they get their photos all over the newspaper?”

Kyle is so disdainful of the agreement and secrecy pact that she says she refused to sign the settlement papers. “Somebody’s got to speak up,” she said.

Kyle lives about a mile west of the refinery with her 33-year-old son, who is disabled from muscular dystrophy and requires a respirator. She says she is reluctant to move because her home is close to her son’s doctors.

A tiny woman with an energetic style and a quick wit, she is not one to bend easily. She worked hard in the 1992 Ross Perot presidential campaign. Her zeal for the 2nd Amendment has earned her “Citizen of the Year” plaques from the national Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms.

Kyle blames Mobil’s fumes for the lung problems she says began 11 years ago when she was rushed to the hospital, unable to breathe. She has been plagued with breathing ailments ever since, she said.

She scoffs at the repeated assurances from Mobil and city officials that the refinery has been made safer in recent years. If it is so safe, she asks, “why did it blast again?”

The Oct. 19 explosion and fire, the most serious at Mobil in seven years, apparently occurred when flammable gases spewed from a pipeline that had been left disconnected. The accident, which remains under investigation by the state job safety agency Cal/OSHA, reawakened old fears among some who live near Mobil.

“Every time we have an earthquake, I don’t know if it’s damned Mobil blowing up,” complained another of Kyle’s co-plaintiffs. “Earthquakes, I’m not afraid of. Mobil, I am.”

The resident, who asked not to be named, said he was gravely disappointed at the suit’s outcome.

“It didn’t do anything,” he said. “The lawyers made money, and the people are still at risk.”

Another co-plaintiff said that while he believes some safety improvements have been added at Mobil, he worries about the refinery.

“There’s always going to be the potential for an explosion,” he said.

Attorney Angelo, who represented the residents, said the settlement did not necessarily involve only monetary payments, but he declined to say whether it includes changes in how the plant is run.

The suit was affected by a 1993 California Supreme Court decision, Potter vs. Firestone, that restricted the admissibility of evidence in toxic exposure cases, Angelo said. “The case took a significant turn,” he said, “with the unfortunate publication of what I consider to be an anti-consumer” ruling.

Angelo said that despite the confidentiality agreement, residents can discuss concerns about the refinery “as long as they don’t talk about the case or its conclusion or anything else they learned due to the case.”

David Roe, a senior attorney with the Environmental Defense Fund, said that while his group will not enter confidentiality agreements as a matter of policy, they are not a sign of nefarious dealing.

“If I were the lawyer for a community group and an oil company was saying, ‘Here’s a lot of money and a lot of cleanup, but we won’t let you tell,’ it has obvious temptations,” Roe said. “Your professional obligation might be to make that deal happen. . . . It might be a very positive settlement for the community.”

But Gail Ruderman Feuer, senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council in Los Angeles, said she is troubled by such agreements because “the community and the public generally do have a right to know what’s happening.”

One safety issue looming large in Torrance is whether Mobil should continue using hydrofluoric acid, which some critics claim is as dangerous as the gas that leaked a decade ago in Bhopal, India, killing thousands. The Oct. 19 explosion occurred 50 feet from the refinery unit that uses hydrofluoric acid.

In 1990, worries about the acid helped sparked the residents’ suit and the lawsuit brought against Mobil by the city of Torrance. The city ended its suit in 1991 with a consent decree, calling for a court-appointed adviser to decide by the end of this year whether Mobil can continue using the acid.

When the city and Mobil recently renegotiated the rules for evaluating the acid’s safety, they drew the wrath of some environmentalists, who maintained that the changes weakened the 1991 pact. Mobil originally was required to stop using the acid unless a safe form was perfected by the end of this year. The changes will permit continued use if studies of a newly modified acid show it is safer than the industry alternative, sulfuric acid. The City Council’s approval of the change was done in secret on the grounds that state law permits cities to privately discuss litigation.

Mobil scientists say they are heartened by the discovery of an additive they say sharply reduces the acid’s lethal, cloud-forming nature. A top refinery official calls test results “very, very positive.” The safety adviser and city officials are studying those findings.

Dolores Kyle, for one, is not convinced. She is fed up with Mobil, with the city, with politicians. Her peach tree appears to be dying, and black dust coats her big outdoor fern. She says her plants used to be gorgeous. Now, she doesn’t even bother planting the back yard.

“After this last blast, if I had the energy,” she said, “I would have been out there with a megaphone.”

Times correspondents James Benning, Mary Guthrie, Jeff Kass and Susan Woodward contributed to this story.