Procedural Posture
Plaintiff school district appealed a summary judgment from the Superior Court of San Diego County (California), which ruled that the district's action against defendant county seeking recovery of environmental remediation costs was untimely under Code Civ. Proc., § 337.15.

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Overview
The district incurred the remediation costs because of groundwater and other contamination caused by an inactive landfill that was constructed and operated by the county more than 10 years before the action was brought. The district's theories of recovery included breach of contract, equitable indemnity, statutory violations, declaratory relief, and nuisance. The parties' lease included a hold harmless clause in favor of the district. A separate agreement allocated the parties' responsibilities for compliance with environmental requirements. The court held that § 337.15 did not bar the action as a matter of law because the district sufficiently pled independent contractual and statutory duties. The allegations of the complaint went beyond claims of damage caused by a latent deficiency in an improvement to real property and were broad enough to encompass theories of express or implied equitable indemnity. Thus, the district's asserted contractual rights and its claims for injunctive and declaratory relief were not based entirely on the manner of construction of the landfill. Moreover, the county, as an operator of the landfill, could have statutory liabilities on that basis.

Outcome
The court reversed the summary judgment.