Two new settlements totaling over $500,000 are the latest in the Closed Loop Refining CRT cleanup case. | corgarashu/Shutterstock
Two New England e-scrap recycling companies have agreed to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to help fund CRT cleanups at former Closed Loop Refining and Recovery warehouses in Ohio.
Court documents show Complete Recycling Solutions (CRS) and RMG Enterprise have reached settlement agreements with their landlords.
According to the settlements, which were submitted to court on June 28, Fall River, Mass.-based CRS will pay nearly $321,000 for shipping 2.1 million pounds of CRT materials to Closed Loop, and Nashua, N.H.-based RMG will pay nearly $230,000 for shipping nearly 1.5 million pounds of CRT materials.
Closed Loop failed in early 2016 after accumulating hundreds of millions of pounds of CRT materials in Ohio and Arizona. The two companies that own or owned Closed Loop’s three Columbus, Ohio warehouses, Garrison Southfield Park and Olymbec USA, sued former CRT suppliers in federal court, arguing they’re legally responsible to assist with the cleanup costs.
The two latest settlements come only a month after four were approved by the judge.
To date, 33 companies have reached settlements and had those settlements approved by the judge. (Multiple Kuusakoski-owned defendants are counted as one company for the purposes of this tally.) Those settlements have totaled nearly $10.3 million.
Two defendants, RMG and CRT, reached settlements worth $551,000 but the agreements haven’t been approved yet.
Note: RMG Enterprise is a different company from Reserve Management Group (RMG), which is the parent company for electronics recycling company Regency Technologies.
One defendant, Sony, had its $1.2 million settlement rejected by the court.
Eight other companies were removed from the case because they failed to respond to the complaint, went out of business or were mistakenly named as defendants. Another nine defendants remain active in the case.
The case is on the docket in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio.
More stories about courts/lawsuits
- Wisconsin CRT stockpile: ‘Like a bomb went off’
- Former e-scrap CEO loses federal appeal
- Closed Loop CRT settlements in Arizona reach $10.8 million
