State High Court Backs Paulucci in Pollution Cleanup Suit

ORLANDO-Jeno F. Paulucci, a high-profile landowner, developer and frozen food entrepreneur in Florida for three decades, has won Florida Supreme Court support in his seven-year-old land pollution cleanup battle with General Dynamics Corp., Stromberg-Carlson Corp. and other affiliated General Dynamics companies.

In addition to a 1998 settlement of $3 million, the court ruled the defendants also must pay the 84-year-old Entrepreneur of the Year $650,000 in lost rent and other cleanup costs for allegedly polluting his land in suburban Sanford, FL between 1967 and 1991. Paulucci sued those firms in 1996.

His suit claimed the defendants hadn’t paid the cleanup costs or obtained government certification that the cleanup job was completed within 15 months, as previously ordered. The suit reached the High Court in Tallahassee after the Fifth District Court of Appeal in Daytona Beach, FL questioned whether an earlier state Circuit Court ruling had the authority to enforce the additional settlement claims.