Opinion ID: 1036612
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Litigation Costs under RCRA

Text: The Litgo Appellants also claim that the District Court erred in denying their request for an award of $4,751,201.88 in litigation costs, including attorney’s fees, against the 18 The dissent claims that our approach will “‘result in a significant impingement of the States’ traditional and primary power over land and water use,’ thus disrupting the balance of state and federal regulation over state, county, and local pollution that both Congress and the Supreme Court have recognized and respected.” Dissenting Op. at 3−4 (internal citation omitted) (quoting Solid Waste Agency of N. Cook Cnty. v. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, 531 U.S. 159, 174 (2001)). We disagree. We hold only that the rights provided by RCRA’s citizen suit provision must be enforced in federal court. This holding does not prevent New Jersey from enforcing its own environmental statutes and common law. See 42 U.S.C. § 6972(f) (“Nothing in this section shall restrict any right which any person (or class of persons) may have under any statute or common law to seek enforcement of any standard or requirement relating to the management of solid waste or hazardous waste, or to seek any other relief (including relief against the Administrator or a State agency).”). 59 United States Appellees. Although RCRA gives courts discretion to award a “prevailing or substantially prevailing party” litigation costs, see 42 U.S.C. § 6972(e), the District Court refused to grant such an award here, in part because it determined that the Litgo Appellants were not prevailing or substantially prevailing parties. 19 We will affirm on that basis. To have “prevailed” or “substantially prevailed” on their claims, the Litgo Appellants must have “secure[d] a material alteration of [their] legal relationship” with the United States Appellees—that is, they must have obtained some kind of judicial relief. NAACP v. N. Hudson Reg’l Fire & Rescue, 665 F.3d 464, 486 n.12 (3d Cir. 2011) (internal quotation marks omitted) (prevailing party); United States v. Craig, 694 F.3d 509, 512 (3d Cir. 2012) (substantially prevailing party); see also Buckhannon Bd. & Care Home, Inc. v. W. Va. Dep’t of Health & Human Res., 532 U.S. 598, 606 (2001). A party who “has failed to secure a judgment on the merits or a court-ordered consent decree, but has nonetheless achieved the desired result because the lawsuit brought about a voluntary change in the defendant’s conduct” is not a prevailing party. Buckhannon Bd., 532 U.S. at 600 (“[W]e have not awarded attorney’s fees where the plaintiff has . . . acquired a judicial pronouncement that the defendant has violated the Constitution unaccompanied by ‘judicial 19 The District Court further determined that an award of litigation costs would be inappropriate for equitable reasons. Because we agree with the District Court that the Litgo Appellants were not prevailing or substantially prevailing parties, we need not address this alternative holding. 60 relief,’” id. at 605–06 (internal citations omitted)); see also Hewitt v. Helms, 482 U.S. 755, 760 (1987) (“Respect for ordinary language requires that a plaintiff receive at least some relief on the merits of his claim before he can be said to prevail.”). The District Court found that the United States Appellees were liable parties under RCRA. It did not, however, grant relief on that claim. Instead, it reserved the question of “what, if any, injunctive relief is appropriate” for the hearing on damages. Litgo I, 2010 WL 2400388, at  n.36. The Litgo Appellants and the United States Appellees then entered into a settlement agreement, so the District Court never decided whether injunctive relief was proper. Because the Litgo Appellants never obtained judicial relief on their CERCLA claim, the District Court correctly found that they are not entitled to litigation costs.