Opinion ID: 172567
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Medical-Monitoring Claims

Text: We now turn to the claims seeking payment for medical monitoring to detect the onset of disease. The district court dismissed these claims without prejudice because they do not assert a bodily injury, as required for jurisdiction under the Price-Anderson Act. We affirm the dismissal. [8] The Price-Anderson Act of 1957 protects the public while promoting the generation of nuclear power by establishing an insurance and indemnification scheme that caps liability in the event of a nuclear mishap. See Duke Power Co. v. Carolina Envtl. Study Group, Inc., 438 U.S. 59, 64-65, 98 S.Ct. 2620, 57 L.Ed.2d 595 (1978). The Act has been amended on several occasions. In its present form it grants federal district courts jurisdiction to hear public liability action[s]. 42 U.S.C. § 2210(n)(2). A `public liability action' is any suit asserting public liability. Id. § 2014(hh). The term public liability encompasses, with a few exceptions, any legal liability arising out of or resulting from a nuclear incident. Id. § 2014(w). [9] A `nuclear incident,' in turn, is defined as any occurrence ... causing .... bodily injury, sickness, disease, or death, or loss of or damage to property, or loss of use of property, arising out of or resulting from the radioactive, toxic, explosive, or other hazardous properties of source, special nuclear, or byproduct material. 42 U.S.C. § 2014(q) (emphasis added). The parties agree that whether the medical-monitoring Plaintiffs (who do not claim to have suffered a sickness or disease) can sue under the Price-Anderson Act depends on whether they have suffered bodily injury. The medical-monitoring Plaintiffs contend that they have suffered bodily injury in the form of DNA damage and cell death resulting from their exposure to radiation at Uravan. Aplt.App., Vol. VIII at 1384-85. Although these injuries are subclinicalnot having been manifested in any diagnosed disease or injuryPlaintiffs contend that the alleged injuries have enhanced the risk that they will develop disease in the future. They seek damages to cover the cost of detecting latent radiation-related health problems. In support of this claim, Plaintiffs rely on reports prepared by Dr. Colin K. Hill, a radiation biologist. Dr. Hill's reports explain that when radiation hits a human cell, it can break DNA strands in the cell's nucleus, by direct or indirect action. Although the vast majority of such breaks are properly repaired by the body, some mutations in the DNA remain and can lead to the development of a cancerous cell. Strand breaks also can result in death of the cell. Such radiation-induced cell injury, Dr. Hill explained, can lead to thyroid disease. Dr. Hill concluded that although a particular exposure to radiation may not trigger these processes, there is no dosage threshold; any exposure to radiation can break DNA strands and set the train in motion. In our view, DNA damage and cell death, which creates only a possibility of clinical disease, does not constitute a bodily injury under the Price-Anderson Act. It is true that a number of courts have recognized medical-monitoring claims (not brought under the Price-Anderson Act) premised on subclinical effects of toxic exposure. But, tellingly, these courts have not reasoned that subclinical injuries from a toxic agent are bodily or physical injuries. Rather, those that have recognized medical-monitoring claims absent clinical symptoms have grounded the cause of action on the plaintiff's legally protected interest in avoiding ... expensive medical evaluations caused by the tortious conduct of others. [10] Other courts that have permitted medical-monitoring relief have required a present physical injury; and they have generally presumed that the subclinical effects of toxic exposure do not constitute physical injury. [11] Perhaps more significantly, adopting the Plaintiffs' understanding of the term bodily injury would render it superfluous in the statute. See McCloy v. U.S. Dept. of Agric., 351 F.3d 447, 451 (10th Cir.2003) (Under a long-standing canon of statutory interpretation, one should avoid construing a statute so as to render statutory language superfluous.). This superfluity becomes apparent when we review what both Plaintiffs and Defendants agree to be the requirements for a Price-Anderson claim. The Price-Anderson Act is limited to claims arising from nuclear incident[s], 42 U.S.C. § 2210(n)(2), which are occurrences caused by radioactive substances, see id. § 2014(q) (defining nuclear incident as occurrence arising from the hazardous properties of source, special nuclear or byproduct material); id. § 2014(z) (defining source material); id. § 2014(aa) (defining special nuclear material); id. § (2014)(e) (defining byproduct material ). In addition, a plaintiff's cause of action must be recognized by the law of the state where the nuclear incident occurred. See id. § 2014(hh). Further, the cause of action must be a claim for property damage, see id. § 2014(q) (nuclear incident may be occurrence causing loss of or damage to property, or loss of use of property), or a personal-injury claim for bodily injury, sickness, disease, or death, id. This much, as we understand the briefs before us, is not disputed. Given this context, however, what purpose is served by the limitation to bodily injury, sickness, disease, or death if, as Plaintiffs contend (and we do not question their science), every exposure to radiation causes intracellular damage and such damage is a bodily injury? Under Plaintiffs' analysis, every personal-injury claim that satisfied state law would also meet the requirements of Price-Anderson. The term bodily injury (as well as the terms sickness and disease) would impose no limit on claims; it would be superfluous. See Dumontier v. Schlumberger Tech. Corp., 543 F.3d 567, 570 (9th Cir.2008) ([This] interpretation of bodily injury would render the term surplusage, as every exposure to radiation would perforce cause [bodily] injury.). Plaintiffs counter that numerous courts interpreting insurance policies ... have held that `bodily injury' for purposes of coverage and/or the duty to defend includes the subclinical injuries that they suffer. Aplt. Br. at 60. The insurance cases that they rely upon fall into two categories. One category includes two cases that concerned the allocation of indemnification responsibilities between insurers who provided coverage for different periods during which disease developed. For example, in Insurance Co. of North America v. Forty-Eight Insulations, Inc., 633 F.2d 1212 (6th Cir.1980), the insured manufacturer of asbestos was being sued by persons who had developed asbestosis. Asbestosis is a disease that develops from exposure over time to asbestos. See id. at 1214. The insured had obtained coverage from various companies for different periods of time. See id. at 1215. The issue was whether a policy insuring against claims for bodily injury (which was defined as `bodily injury, sickness, or disease ... sustained ... during the policy period'), id. at 1216, would provide coverage if the policy was not in effect when the asbestosis was diagnosed, but only when the claimant was exposed to asbestos, see id. The court held that in this context bodily injury encompassed asymptomatic tissue damage from asbestos that was not diagnosable, and a policy in effect at the time of exposure therefore provided coverage. Id. at 1223; see Sandoz, Inc. v. Employer's Liab. Assurance Corp., 554 F.Supp. 257, 265-66 (D.N.J.1983) (following Forty-Eight Insulations, in a case involving a different disease, to reject view that bodily injury must be manifest). The second category of Plaintiffs' cases includes decisions holding that an insurer providing bodily-injury coverage has a duty to defend against claims when there was an unmanifested injury during the policy period. See Guar. Nat'l Ins. Co. v. Azrock Indus. Inc., 211 F.3d 239, 244 (5th Cir.2000) (inhalation of asbestos fibers during policy period triggers bodily-injury insurer's duty to defend), abrogated on other grounds by Don's Bldg. Supply, Inc. v. OneBeacon Ins. Co., 267 S.W.3d 20, 31-32 (Tex.2008); Zurich Am. Ins. Co. v. Nokia, Inc., 268 S.W.3d 487, 492-93 (Tex.2008) (allegations of cellular injuries from use of cellphones triggered bodily-injury insurers' duty to defend). These insurance cases are readily distinguishable. As Forty-Eight Insulations recognized, the legal meaning of the term bodily injury depends on context. See 633 F.2d at 1220-22. It observed that other courts had interpreted bodily injury to require a manifest injury when resolving questions regarding a statute of limitations, liability for workers' compensation, and health-insurance coverage. See id. But it decided that none of those decisions would be controlling on the issue before it. See id. Most important to the courts in all the cases relied on by Plaintiffs was the proposition that they should construe insurance policy languageand thus the term bodily injury broadly to promote coverage. Id. at 1219; accord Zurich, 268 S.W.3d at 491 (We resolve all doubts regarding the duty to defend in favor of the duty.). Guaranty National, for example, acknowledged that another construction of the term bodily injury was arguably the truest to the ... policy language, 211 F.3d at 251, yet held that `bodily injury' encompassed subclinical tissue damage, id. at 243-44. The term bodily injury arises in this case in a substantially different context. Here it governs whether Plaintiffs can pursue a federal cause of actionnamely, the Price-Anderson Act's public liability action. 42 U.S.C. § 2014(hh), (w), (q). Plaintiffs have not directed us to any interpretative canon instructing courts to construe personal-injury causes of action broadly. Indeed, public policy may well argue for denying relief to those without symptomatic, diagnosed ailments so that scarce resources can be directed to compensate those who have suffered more serious harms. See Metro-North Commuter R.R. Co. v. Buckley, 521 U.S. 424, 442, 117 S.Ct. 2113, 138 L.Ed.2d 560 (1997) (in support of decision not to recognize claims for medical-monitoring damages under Federal Employers' Liability Act by plaintiffs who lack manifest symptoms of disease, Court notes that permitting medical-monitoring claims could threaten both a flood of less important cases (potentially absorbing resources better left available to those more seriously harmed) and the systemic harms that can accompany unlimited and unpredictable liability (for example, vast testing liability adversely affecting the allocation of scarce medical resources) (citation and internal quotation marks omitted)). Accordingly, we see no reason to abandon traditional methods of statutory interpretation and adopt a meaning for bodily injury that renders superfluous several words in 42 U.S.C. § 2014(q). Finally, we address Plaintiffs' contention that the legislative history of the Price-Anderson Act implies that we must interpret the term bodily injury in the Act the way it would be interpreted in an insurance policy. The legislative history on which they rely consists of the following sentence in a congressional committee report: The words `sickness, disease' were added following bodily injury [in the definition of nuclear incident ] in order to make it perfectly clear that the extent of bodily injury was the same as the definition of bodily injury as specified by the standard NELIA [Nuclear Energy Liability Insurance Association] insurance policy. S.Rep. No. 85-296 (1957), reprinted in 1957 U.S.C.C.A.N. 1803, 1817-18; see Berg v. E.I. DuPont De Nemours & Co. (In re Berg Litig.), 293 F.3d 1127, 1131 (9th Cir.2002) (relying on this history to support proposition that Price-Anderson Act does not impose liability for purely emotional injuries). We are not persuaded. To begin with, we are reluctant to base our interpretation of a statute on a single sentence in a committee report that does not appear to be addressing the specific issue before usnamely, whether asymptomatic, undiagnosable cellular injury constitutes a bodily injury under the Act. Moreover, inspection of what was apparently the NELIA standard policy of the time, see 23 Fed.Reg. 6681, 6684-87 (Aug. 28, 1958), suggests that bodily injury did not encompass cellular, or any other undetectable, injury. Section IV of the policy, entitled Application of policy, stated: This policy applies only to bodily injury or property damage (1) which results from nuclear incidents occurring during the policy period and (2) which is discovered, and for which written claim is made against the insured, not later than two years after the end of the policy period. Id. at 6685 (emphasis added); see 10 C.F.R. § 140.91 (current standard-policy provision with identical language in § IV(2)). Because the policy covers only discovered bodily injury, it apparently would not insure against claims for undetectable injuries such as those at the cellular level. (This is not to say that there would be no compensation under the Act for persons with latent injuries that are detected years after the nuclear incident. For example, the government's contribution to paying liability claims could include such injuries. See, e.g., 42 U.S.C. § 2210(i)(2)(C) (when claims from a nuclear incident may exceed Act's liability cap, President must submit to Congress 1 or more compensation plans that may include recommendations that funds be allocated or set aside for the payment of claims that may arise as a result of latent injuries that may not be discovered until a later date).) In short, under the Price-Anderson Act the asymptomatic DNA damage and cell death that results whenever one is exposed to radiation is not in itself a bodily injury. [12]