Opinion ID: 158801
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Nature of the Present Case

Text: (1) The Jurisdictions’ MDL 378 Case (No. 99-3102) In their opposition to Appellees’ motion to dismiss, the Jurisdictions admit that “[t]he Jurisdictions’ claims are all based on enforcing the FSA.” (Jurisdictions’ Opposition at 3.) As we have previously stated, claims under the FSA are within the exclusive jurisdiction of the Federal Circuit and thus cannot be considered by this court. The Jurisdictions cite several TECA and Federal Circuit cases for the proposition that FSA claims do not arise under the ESA or EPAA. (See Jurisdictions’ Opposition at 3-4.) None of these cases, however, directly addresses this point; moreover, the Jurisdictions fail to discuss TECA’s 1988 In re Stripper Well case explicitly finding that FSA claims do indeed arise under those statutes. Thus, because the Jurisdictions’ claims are based on the FSA, the Federal Circuit has exclusive jurisdiction. (2) The States’ MDL 378 Case (No. 99-3065) In their brief, the States have carefully phrased the issues presented to this court to avoid any mention of the FSA. They ask this court: “Did the lower court err in ruling that the 1977 Department of Energy Organization Act (“DOEOA”) requires the challenged order of the Department of Energy’s Office of Hearings and Appeals to be deemed an unreviewable act of prosecutorial discretion?” - 13 - (States’ 99-3065 Br. at 3.) Moreover, they urge that in evaluating jurisdiction we must “‘look at the nature of the issue presented to us and not to the nature of the case or controversy presented below.’” (States’ 99-3065 Opposition at 2 (quoting MGPC, Inc. v. DOE, 673 F.2d 1277, 1281 (Temp. Emer. Ct. App. 1982).) The issues before this court, they argue, “are discrete and severable from any ESA/EPAA issues raised by the underlying claims or in the lower court’s decision.” (Id. at 3-4.) A careful review of the case, however, reveals otherwise. Under the case or controversy requirement of Article III, courts decide cases in the context of a particular dispute and not in a legal vacuum. Thus, notwithstanding the States’ careful semantics, we understand the primary question presented in this appeal to be: “Did the district court err in determining that the OHA’s decision that Chevron did not receive excess tertiary incentive revenue and therefore need not make restitution to the Stripper Well escrow fund was unreviewable?” The district court listed a variety of grounds for dismissing the States’ claims, including that the OHA’s decision not to enforce the PRO was an unreviewable act of prosecutorial discretion. Under Steel Co. v. Citizens for a Better Environment, 523 U.S. 83 (1998), however, the district court need only have announced that it lacked jurisdiction over the matter and dismissed the case. Steel rejected the use of so-called “hypothetical jurisdiction” to reach the merits of - 14 - a case, and a jurisdictional dismissal is all that is necessary to the holding. As such, we must consider the remainder of the district court’s decision dicta. See also Gold v. Local 7 United Food and Commercial Workers Union, 159 F.3d 1307, 1310 (10th Cir. 1998) (noting Steel requires that jurisdictional issues must be resolved first). Nevertheless, determining whether the OHA’s decision in this case is properly reviewable would require this court to consider issues arising both under the ESA and EPAA directly and under the FSA. The district court based its ruling that the decision was not reviewable on Consolidated Edison Co. v. O’Leary, 131 F.3d 1475 (Fed. Cir. 1997), and the States ask us to reject this authority. (See States’ 99-3065 Br. at 27-29.) However, even a brief glance at that case reveals that the Federal Circuit relied heavily on interpretation of ESA/EPAA issues to reach its result. See O’Leary, 131 F.3d at 1478 (“Four statutes are pertinent to this issue: sections 209, 210, and 211 of the ESA, which were incorporated into the EPAA, and section 503 of the Department of Energy Organization Act (DOEOA).”). The States would have us focus only on whether the DOEOA precludes review of the OHA’s decision, but it is clear that the case relied upon by the district court to dismiss the States’ claims directly involved the ESA and EPAA. As such, this claim clearly arises under those statutes. - 15 - Moreover, we would have to determine what effect paragraph IV.A.2 of the FSA should have on our characterization of the OHA’s decision. That paragraph reads: Future DOE Actions: With the sole exception set forth in II.A.4, nothing in this Agreement shall be read or construed to limit or render reviewable the exercise of DOE’s prosecutorial discretion in determining the appropriate action to take, if any, with regard to any enforcement matter. Further, nothing in this Agreement shall be read or construed to impose any obligation or duty upon the DOE regarding the enforcement or non-enforcement of its regulations, and it remains solely in the DOE’s discretion to determine whether an enforcement proceeding should be initiated, settled, pursued on particular terms or terminated. We are at a loss to see how the issue presented to this court could be decided without reference to this highly probative provision of the agreement underlying this dispute. (See also FSA ¶ VI.B (“[The FSA] shall not create any right of action against DOE concerning the initiation, continuation or conduct of any litigation.”).) Furthermore, Appellee Chevron relies in part on the FSA to support its assertion that the district court’s decision not to review the OHA’s action was correct. (See Aple. Chevron 99-3065/99-3012 Br. at 35.) It is clear that raising an ESA/EPAA issue (which the FSA clearly is) in a defense is sufficient to invoke the Federal Circuit’s exclusive jurisdiction. This court declines to participate in the fiction that this dispute does not turn squarely on the ESA, the EPAA, and the FSA. In order to grant the relief sought - 16 - by the States, we would have to conduct inquiries specifically committed to the expertise of the Federal Circuit. Specifically, we would have to reject a Federal Circuit decision explicitly resting on those statutes, interpret and distinguish a paragraph of the FSA directly on point, and consider a defense implicating the FSA. 3 The States also contend that the district court erroneously excluded certain arguments advanced in the States’ reply brief before that court and that the district court “should have considered all of the States’ claims together in the MDL 378 docket.” While these claims do not directly turn on an interpretation or application of the FSA, the Federal Circuit nevertheless has exclusive jurisdiction to resolve them. In Phoenix Petroleum Co. v. United States Fed’l Energy Regulatory Comm’n, 95 F.3d 1555 (Fed. Cir. 1996), the Federal Circuit explained that TECA’s exclusive jurisdiction extended to issues that did not themselves arise under the EPAA when “a meaningful ruling requires consideration of the issues as a whole, the construction of the EPAA will control the litigation, the issues are so commingled as to render separate treatment impractical, or the non-EPAA issues are subsidiary, preliminary or threshold to an EPAA issue.” The States also alleged that “the court’s conclusion that OHA was 3 exercising unreviewable prosecutorial discretion (a) precluded it from addressing the merits and (b) fatally infected its review of the merits.” Because we have found that this court lacks jurisdiction to review the district court’s primary determination, we likewise cannot consider these subsidiary claims. - 17 - Id. at 1563 (quoting Pennzoil Exploration & Prod. Co. v. Lujan, 928 F.2d 1139, 1141 (Temp. Emer. Ct. App. 1991). We hold that the same is true when issues not otherwise relating to the FSA are so inextricably linked and subsidiary to the FSA claim that it would be both impractical and wasteful to consider those claims separately. In the present case, whether the district court properly excluded some of the States’ arguments and whether the district court properly refused to consider certain claims under its MDL 378 docket are surely subsidiary to the States’ primary FSA claims. As we have explained at length above, it is clear that these appeals are fundamentally based on the FSA, and it would merely waste the courts’ and the litigants’ resources to remove these secondary issues from their proper context. Indeed, the States rightly acknowledge that the “central issue” is their claim that the district court should have reviewed the OHA decision. Furthermore, we note that because the additional claims the States sought to raise were themselves based on the FSA, whether the district court properly excluded these claims is merely a threshold inquiry to an FSA claim. Thus, it appears that the States’ claims that do not on their face implicate the FSA in fact are so secondary in relevance and importance to their FSA companions that they must fall within the Federal Circuit’s exclusive jurisdiction. - 18 - (3) The States’ Original Complaint (No. 99-3066) On the same day the district court dismissed the States’ and Jurisdictions’ motions to enforce the FSA, it issued a separate order dismissing the States’ concurrent original complaint. In that order, the district court held that the States’ allegation that DOE had violated the FSA failed to state a claim upon which relief could be granted. The court then dismissed the remainder of the States’ claims for lack of standing, or, alternatively, for lack of proper venue. (See Order of Dismissal at 2.) The States have appealed these dismissals to this court. In dismissing the States’ FSA claim, the district court explicitly adopted the reasoning of its order dismissing the MDL 378 claims. (See Order of Dismissal at 2.) For the same reasons we cannot review the MDL 378 decisions, this court does not have jurisdiction to review the States’ claim that the district court erroneously adopted the MDL 378 rulings. The same result obtains with regard to the district court’s dismissals for lack of standing. In its brief, Appellee DOE argues that the States do indeed lack standing under ESA: The standing issue centers on an interpretation of ESA sections 20911 and the bases on which Congress authorized public and private actions to enforce the ESA, the EPAA or regulations issued thereunder. An unbroken line of controlling decisions stand [sic] for the proposition that private parties, such as the States, lack standing to seek judicial review of a DOE enforcement decision made under the purview of the ESA, the EPAA or regulations issued thereunder. - 19 - As noted above, this court has held that “the TECA’s jurisdiction can be created by defenses that raise ESA/EPAA issues.” In re Seneca Oil, 906 F.2d at 1454 n.11. Consideration of Appellees’ counter arguments on appeal would require this court to interpret statutes that are plainly within the exclusive jurisdiction of the Federal Circuit. Allowing this appeal to proceed would inevitably thwart either the will of Congress in granting exclusive jurisdiction to the Federal Circuit or the Appellees’ right to have their defenses heard by the appropriate authority. Thus, Appellants’ claims may not be presented to this court. 4