Opinion ID: 221719
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The made service available determination should be decided on a customer-by-customer basis in this case

Text: Guthrie first challenges the district court's determination that it will decide whether Logan-1 made services available on a customer-by-customer basis, rather than on an area-wide basis. We need not set forth a per se rule here but, instead, conclude that the district court was correct in applying a customer-by-customer basis in this case because Logan-1 specifically alleged that Guthrie violated § 1926(b) by providing water to certain customers located in Logan-1's service area. That is a more narrow claim than if Logan-1 had instead alleged that § 1926(b)'s protection from competition applied to protect entire areas within its designated service area. We, therefore, need not decide here whether Logan-1 could make such an area-wide claim. Moreover, the manner that Logan-1 pled its § 1926(b) claim, on a customer-by-customer basis, is consistent with how prior Tenth Circuit cases have addressed the question of whether an indebted rural water district has made service available for purposes of § 1926(b). For example, in Sequoyah County, the plaintiff rural water district alleged that a competing municipal water provider violated § 1926(b) by providing water service to specific customers in the rural water district's assigned territory. See 191 F.3d at 1194-95, 1197. This court, in that case, thus addressed the rural water district's § 1926(b) claim on a customer-by-customer basis. See id. at 1203-06; see also Butterfield Park, 291 F.3d at 1263-64 (addressing a dispute under § 1926(b) about which competing water provider had the right to serve a particular customer); cf. Rural Water Dist. No. 1, 243 F.3d at 1267, 1271-72 (addressing whether a rural water district made service available to three specific properties within its service area). Similarly, this court, in Pittsburg County, remanded a § 1926(b) claim to the district court with instructions to consider whether the rural water district had made service available to each of the specific customers at issue in that case. See 358 F.3d at 713-14; see also id. at 716 (addressing the defendant water district's sales to customers in an area de-annexed from the purportedly protected rural water district); Sequoyah Cnty., 191 F.3d at 1201 n. 6 (noting on remand that the district court would have to consider, among other things, whether the rural water district demonstrate[d] that it `made service available' to the customers that Defendants allegedly began serving before the repurchase date of the rural water provider's loans obtained from the USDA). The Eighth Circuit has also applied the pipes in the ground test customer by customer. See Pub. Water Supply Dist. No. 3 of Laclede Cnty. v. City of Lebanon, 605 F.3d 511, 521-23 (8th Cir.2010). Therefore, given the way that Logan-1 alleged and argued its § 1926(b) claims in this case, the district court did not err in concluding that it would decide whether Logan-1 had made services available on a customer-by-customer basis.