Opinion ID: 4198308
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Congress’s Response to Causation Issues

Text: Congress has recognized the problems inherent in attempting to prove causation in Public Liability Actions almost from the very beginning of our attempts to harness the power of the atom. The Atomic Energy Act of 1946 created the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy to correct the deficiencies of the Price-Anderson Act, including the stringent burden of establishing causation.37 The Committee 36 Gold at 258-59. 37 Taylor Meehan, Lessons from the Price-Anderson Nuclear Industry Indemnity Act for Future Clean Energy Compensatory Models, 18 Conn. Ins. L.J. 339, 346 (2012) [hereinafter Meehan]; see also Michael Flynn, A Debt Long Overdue, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 41-42 (2001) (The Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Act acknowledged that “nuclear weapons workers were put at risk building the country’s arsenal.” Acknowledging the difficulties associated with establishing causation, and “[b]ecause the government failed to adequately track exposures at these sites, [the Act] assumes that workers’ cancers are work related, thus relieving the workers of the near-impossible task of having to prove the connection.” Further, the Act “establishes the possibility that other sites and illnesses may be added to the cohort at a later date.”); see also David Rocchio, The Price-Anderson Act: Allocation of the Extraordinary Risk of Nuclear Generated Electricity: A Model Punitive Damage Provision, 14 B.C. Envtl. Aff. L. 11 was also concerned with state statutes of limitation that could nullify meritorious claims because of the latency of injuries caused by radiation.38 Consequently, the 1966 amendments to the Act included a provision for the waiver of various defenses under state tort law in the event of an “extraordinary nuclear occurrence.”39 An “extraordinary nuclear occurrence” was defined as: [A]ny event causing a discharge or dispersal of . . . byproduct material from its intended place of confinement in amounts offsite, . . . which the Nuclear Regulatory Commission or the Secretary of Energy. . . determines to be substantial, and which the Nuclear Regulatory Commission or the Secretary of Energy. . . determines has resulted or will probably result in substantial damages to persons offsite . . ..40 “This provision was enacted in order to assure that the victim’s entitlement to compensation would be determined under a strict liability standard, instead of the negligence standard that most state courts require.”41 The amendments also included a provision that waived state statutes of limitation that were more limited than the three-year limit established under the Price-Anderson Act.42 However, the overarching problem of causation was not impacted by attempts to augment statutes of limitation or impose strict Rev. 521, 538-39 (1987) [hereinafter Rocchio] (citing Hearings Before the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy on Proposed Amendments to the Price-Anderson Act Relating to Waiver of Defenses, 89th Cong., 2d Sess. 105-07 (1966), available at https://www.loc.gov/resource/conghear08.00170174379/?sp= 10). 38 Rocchio at 539. 39 42 U.S.C. § 2014(j). 40 Id. 41 Meehan at 347. 42 Id.; see 42 U.S.C. § 2210(n)(1)(F)(iii) (The Act allows “any issue or defense based on any statute of limitations if suit is instituted within three years from the date on which the claimant first knew, or reasonably could have known, of his injury or damage and the cause thereof.”). 12 12 liability. In either case, a plaintiff would still have to establish that a given pathology was caused by exposure to a defendant’s radiation rather than background radiation, heredity or some other factor. Accordingly, this legislative effort was only helpful in the exceedingly rare cases where that evidentiary gap could be bridged. In 1988, Congress created the Presidential Commission on Catastrophic Nuclear Accidents to “conduct a comprehensive study of appropriate means of fully compensating victims of a catastrophic nuclear accident that exceeds the aggregate public liability . . . in the statute . . . .”43 In its final report to Congress, the Commission “sought to identify the ‘next best’ approach, since attaining the ‘best’ solution, compensating only those whose cancers or other latent illnesses were caused by the accident, is not currently possible.”44 The options included: Option A, relaxing traditional notions of proof of causation and paying something to everyone who gets cancer; Option B, retaining and rigorously applying traditional standards, which would result in paying few, if any, claims; and Option C, adopting some proxy for direct proof of causation, such as imputing group risk to individuals who actually develop cancer and paying those claims where the association between radiation exposure and a particular cancer is the strongest (or at least at some minimum level), with the option, where a strong association is required for a “full” award, of also paying lesser 43 Presidential Comm’n on Catastrophic Nuclear Accidents, Report to the Congress from the Presidential Commission on Catastrophic Nuclear Accidents, Letter to the Senate (August 1990) [hereinafter Report], available at http://www.state.nv.us/nucwaste/news/rpccna/pcrcna02.htm. 44 Id. at ch. 4.IV.B. 13 amounts on those claims with a somewhat weaker association.45 The Commission ultimately recommended Option C46 and provided three possible ways to implement that Option, while noting that better techniques can be developed in the future: 47 The first would pay the full amount for any diagnosed cancer where the probability of causation (PC) is .5 or greater, and a declining amount down to a cutoff of PC = .2, at which compensation would be 20 percent of the full award, determined in accordance with Chapter 3. The second variation would pay the full amount for any diagnosed cancer where the PC is .5 or greater, and a declining amount down to a PC of .2, at which compensation would be 30 percent of a full award. The third variation, which is most like Option A, above, would simply pay a benefit to anyone in the affected area with a diagnosed cancer whose radiation exposure indicated a PC of 20 percent or greater. Congress might elect to make this a full award determined in accordance with Chapter 3, or a fixed dollar amount, or reimbursement for actual medical expenses.48 45 Id. 46 This option is known as the “probability of causation” rule. 47 Report at ch. 4.II. 48 Id. at ch. 4.IV.B. (citation omitted). 14 14 Courts have adopted variations of these and other options as discussed below. However, despite these efforts, the problem of establishing causation in these suits remains because we continue to approach such claims the same way we approach injuries resulting from asbestos, defective brakes, holes in pavement, and falls in the aisles of the neighborhood supermarket.