Argentine energy company YPF SA and a trust for its former subsidiary Maxus Energy Corp. on Monday resumed their longstanding dispute over who should pay as much as $14 billion to clean up the contaminated Passaic River in New Jersey, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. Lawyers representing both parties argued before Judge Christopher Sontchi of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Del., over whether parent company YPF can be shielded from the multibillion-dollar liability by putting its subsidiary in bankruptcy. YPF placed Maxus in bankruptcy in 2016, leaving it with the liability related to the contamination of the river. In 2018, the trust in charge of Maxus’s liquidation sued YPF for stripping away most of Maxus’s international assets. In 2019, the lawsuit was allowed to move forward by Judge Sontchi, who presided over Maxus’s 2016 bankruptcy case, after YPF asked for the case to be dismissed. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has said that 100 or so other companies might share responsibility for polluting the Passaic with byproducts from the manufacture of paints, pesticides and other chemical products. On Monday, the trust in charge of liquidating the assets of Maxus argued that YPF had stripped valuable assets from the oil-and-gas subsidiary, leaving it with the gigantic bill to clean up the river.
