Opinion ID: 172146
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The district court's failure to consider evidence of risk

Text: In reaching its implicit holding ( see Maj. op. at 782) that because Oklahoma could not establish [poultry litter's] causation of actual harm to the waters of the IRW, the State thus ... could not establish a likelihood of success on the merits of its RCRA claim, the district court failed to make findings of fact or come to conclusions of law broad enough to cover all material issues at stake in its determination of Oklahoma's likelihood of success on the merits, OCI Wyo., 479 F.3d at 1203. For success on the merits under § 6972(a)(1)(B) requires not proof of actual harm to health or the environment, but rather a demonstration that there may be a risk of harm, Burlington Northern, 505 F.3d at 1020, and Oklahoma put on credible evidence of risk of harm to IRW waters, and to those who use them, by putting on evidence of plausible pathways by which poultry litter constituents, including pathogenic bacteria, could reach those waters. In a motion for preliminary injunction under RCRA's citizen-suit provision, that credible evidence of risk patently constitutes a material issue that the district court was required to address under the correct legal standard before determining Oklahoma's likelihood of success on the merits. [2] The majority opinion excuses the district court's failure to explicitly discuss RCRA's `may present' language on the ground that given the district court's view of the evidence, Oklahoma failed to link land-applied poultry litter and the bacteria in the IRW. (Maj. op. at 476-77.) Yet the district court's constricted view of the evidence is precisely the problem here, as the opinion and order never so much as mentions Oklahoma's credible evidence of risk, nor the § 6972(a)(1)(B) and Burlington Northern standard under which that evidence was required to be evaluated. I therefore must conclude that the district court abused its discretion in denying the motion for preliminary injunction on the basis of an implied holding as to Oklahoma's likelihood of success on the merits, as the court's failure to apply the correct legal standard to the evidence constitutes a clear error of law. See RoDa Drilling Co. v. Siegal, 552 F.3d 1203, 1208 (10th Cir.2009) (quotation omitted). As a result, I would vacate the order and remand for the district court to apply the correct legal standard under RCRA to Oklahoma's evidence of risk, and to satisfy Rule 52(a)'s requirements for findings of fact and conclusions of law in applying that standard.