SAN FRANCISCO (CN) - Land developer Five Point Holdings moved one step closer to trial on Thursday in its lawsuit against Tetra Tech EC for its role in the 2018 Hunters Point Naval Shipyard scandal, where the company was accused of improperly cleaning up radioactive contamination. 

At a hearing, a federal judge resolved multiple motions to dismiss and for summary judgment in the multiple related lawsuits around the scandal without much explanation.

"I will not issue judgment without a trial on the basis of the law here," U.S. District Judge James Donato told attorneys.

The Barack Obama appointee verbally denied the defendants' motions, not indicating when he would issue a written ruling on the matter.

However, Donato also confirmed that the U.S. government, one of the defendants, wouldn't be heading to trial in the case in October, as it is currently awaiting the approval of a settlement with the parties on claims that it violated the False Claims Act.

Although lawyers for Tetra Tech EC protested the judge's swift decision on the motions, the judge remained steadfast.

"Could I be heard on those?" asked attorney Andrew Rhys Davies of Wilmer Cutler, who represented Tetra Tech.

"I just denied them," Donato said.

Donato also had a frank exchange with the Lennar Corporation, one of the plaintiff developers, regarding previous settlement negotiations between the various parties.

"People are settling. Things are happening. Why aren't you settling?" Donato asked.

"They don't want to pay us as much money as we want," smiled David Marroso of O'Melveny & Myers, who represented Lennar.

The judge also directed the parties to address the "mountain" of motions on expert witnesses from each side ahead of trial, saying he would be reluctant to take experts out of the upcoming trial unless they were truly peddling "junk science," citing Supreme Court precedent.

Donato set a trial date of Dec. 8, 2025, for Five Point's case against Tetra Tech, citing a desire to proceed swiftly in the five-year-old lawsuit.

"Judgment day is coming. December seems a long way away, but you and I know it's not," Donato said.

Attorneys for both sides declined to comment.

A Tetra Tech spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Five Point Holdings sued Tetra Tech and the U.S. government with separate lawsuits for special damages in 2020 over claims that the company falsified soil tests in an environmental cleanup project at the former shipyard in Hunters Point.

In the lawsuit brought against Tetra Tech, Five Point Holdings and its subsidiary CP Development Co. claim Tetra Tech fraudulently falsified widespread information in connection with the company's involvement in cleaning up the San Francisco shipyard.

"This is too little too late by the United States; the United States failed to properly supervise Tetra Tech for years pursuant to its contractual, statutory and other legal obligations to do so," the developer said in its lawsuit.

Tetra Tech was contracted to provide detailed and legitimate environmental surveys of the ongoing reconstruction project and ultimately be able to green-light the decontaminated status of a 400-acre site where around 10,000 homes were set to be constructed. The company was reportedly paid over $250 million for its work on the project.

Five Point Holdings claims Tetra Tech instead opted to falsify much of the critical information it was contracted to provide, most notably by destroying legitimate soil samples taken from the site and replacing them with samples that were known to contain only clean and uncontaminated soil.

Five Point Holdings requested compensatory and special damages from Tetra Tech, specifically for it to be required to pay punitive and exemplary damages as punishment for its alleged conduct.

Other entities have also filed similar claims against Tetra Tech and the federal government in San Francisco federal court. Earlier this month, a different federal judge dismissed several claims from an environmental group against the U.S. Navy for its role in the cleanup scandal.

This case was filed in the Northern District of California and heard at the Phillip Burton Federal Courthouse in San Francisco, California.

Source: Courthouse News Service