{"id":444047,"date":"2026-08-26T13:28:08","date_gmt":"2026-08-26T13:28:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/444047\/"},"modified":"2026-08-26T13:28:08","modified_gmt":"2026-08-26T13:28:08","slug":"orange-county-to-sue-garden-grove-aerospace-company-over-chemical-tank-crisis-orange-county-register","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/444047\/","title":{"rendered":"Orange County to sue Garden Grove aerospace company over chemical tank crisis \u2013 Orange County Register"},"content":{"rendered":"

Orange County will sue to recoup more than $4 million in costs associated with the response to a chemical threat<\/a> at GKN Aerospace\u2019s Garden Grove facility<\/a> after a faulty tank triggered mass evacuations over Memorial Day weekend.<\/p>\n

The OC Board of Supervisors unanimously agreed during a closed session on Tuesday, Aug. 25, to have County Counsel Leon Page hire outside law firms and initiate litigation against the company to \u201cseek penalties and recover costs\u201d the county incurred in response to the May incident.<\/p>\n

The county will be represented by Baron & Budd P.C. and Diab Chambers, LLP, which would receive an 18% contingency fee on any recovered money, Page said at Tuesday\u2019s meeting.<\/p>\n

The county demanded full payment of costs related to the incident in a July 17 letter<\/a> that Page sent the company.<\/p>\n

A majority of the emergency response costs, around $2.7 million, came from the OC Sheriff\u2019s Department, according to estimates listed in the letter. Expenses from the OC Health Care Agency, the county CEO\u2019s office, OC Public Works and OC Community Resources total more than $750,000.<\/p>\n

In addition to the nearly $3.5 million in costs submitted by various departments, the county also listed $500,000 in discretionary funds that the supervisors allocated to help residents impacted by the crisis.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis incident was clearly not an unforeseeable accident as GKN has a well-documented history of regulatory violations<\/a> at the site dating back over a decade,\u201d Page wrote in the letter. \u201cWhile GKN has pledged generic community relief funds<\/a> to local nonprofit organizations, those corporate contributions do not absolve GKN of its strict financial liability to the taxpayers of Orange County.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dozens of lawsuits have been filed against GKN Aerospace since an overheated tank containing methyl methacrylate<\/a> \u2014 a chemical used in acrylic-plastics manufacturing \u2014 forced the evacuation of more than 50,000 residents in Garden Grove and surrounding cities as emergency crews worked to prevent an explosion or spill.<\/p>\n

The company has agreed to create a $100 million claims program<\/a> for affected residents,\u00a0according to an announcement Monday from the Orange County District Attorney\u2019s Office.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Orange County will sue to recoup more than $4 million in costs associated with the response to a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":444048,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[163,165,164,7,136570,23,611,4765,136],"class_list":["post-444047","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-anaheim","tag-anaheim","tag-anaheim-headlines","tag-anaheim-news","tag-california","tag-garden-grove-chemical-threat","tag-local-news","tag-orange-county","tag-orange-county-board-of-supervisors","tag-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444047","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=444047"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444047\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/444048"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=444047"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=444047"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=444047"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}