Opinion ID: 2813710
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Claims Against CBAC Gaming

Text: The Complaint alleges that although CBAC Gaming agreed to engage in certain remedial activities as part of the construction of the casino and its ancillary facilities, those 9 undertakings did not comply with RCRA and so did not adequately address contamination at the Casino Site. Furthermore, the Complaint alleged that CBAC’s Casino Site construction activities would continue to contribute to and exacerbate existing contamination in the soil and groundwater, as well as its migration to the Waterfront Parcels and Middle Branch. In particular, Goldfarb pled that CBAC Gaming’s development actions violated subsection (a)(1)(A) because they entailed generating, treating, storing, disposing of, and transporting hazardous wastes without the requisite permits. In addition, the Complaint alleged CBAC Gaming’s construction activities violated subsection (a)(1)(B) because they contributed to hazardous waste contamination that presented an imminent and substantial endangerment to human health and the environment. CBAC Gaming moved to dismiss the Complaint pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(1) for lack of subject matter jurisdiction and Rule 12(b)(6) for failure to state a claim. In relevant part, CBAC Gaming contended that the claims against it should be dismissed under RCRA’s anti-duplication provision, 42 U.S.C. § 6905(a). According to CBAC Gaming, its National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (“NPDES”) permit, which permitted discharge of stormwater during construction of the casino, shielded it from RCRA liability. 10 The district court granted CBAC Gaming’s motion to dismiss based on that general defense. The court’s analysis was somewhat convoluted, but tracked the following course: Under RCRA’s anti-duplication provision, activities regulated by the Clean Water Act (“CWA”) cannot also be regulated by RCRA if enforcement of both Acts would lead to inconsistent requirements. See § 6905(a). The CWA regulates, among other things, the discharge of pollutants from point sources into navigable waters. To comply with the CWA, Maryland issued a general construction stormwater permit (the NPDES permit), and CBAC Gaming was required to comply with that permit during the course of the casino construction activities. Under the terms of the NPDES permit, CBAC Gaming must comply with erosion and sediment control and stormwater management plans. Those plans, in turn, mandated that CBAC Gaming comply with specific remediation activities set forth in a Response Action Plan (“RAP”) that CBAC Gaming voluntarily performed as part of its participation in Maryland’s Voluntary Cleanup Program. As a result, the remediation activities contained in the RAP had effectively been incorporated into the provisions of the NPDES permit and were no longer voluntary. The NPDES permit thus regulated more than just point source stormwater discharge from the Casino Site, but also covered CBAC Gaming’s other construction activities at the Casino Site by virtue of the 11 erosion and sediment control and stormwater management plans and the RAP. So long as CBAC Gaming complied with those approved activities, the NPDES permit shielded CBAC Gaming from liability under the CWA. Following this path of reasoning, the district court concluded that the NPDES permit shielded CBAC Gaming from liability under RCRA since “further remedial requirements imposed under RCRA would be inconsistent with the remedial activities already deemed appropriate for the [Casino] Site” under the NPDES permit. (J.A. 81.) In granting the motion to dismiss as to CBAC Gaming, the district court did not state whether its ruling was based upon Rule 12(b)(1) or Rule 12(b)(6). Recognizing the district court’s lack of clarity on this point, the parties devote considerable space on brief to threshold issues that are contingent upon which rule the district court in fact utilized. For example, only under Rule 12(b)(1) would it matter whether RCRA’s anti-duplication provision implicates subject matter jurisdiction. What is more, our inquiry would not be as concerned with what materials the district court relied on to reach its conclusion. E.g., In re KBR, Inc., 744 F.3d 326, 33334 (4th Cir. 2014) (“When a defendant challenges subject matter jurisdiction via a Rule 12(b)(1) motion to dismiss, the district court may regard the pleadings as mere evidence on the issue and may consider evidence outside the pleadings without converting 12 the proceeding to one for summary judgment. However, when the jurisdictional facts are inextricably intertwined with those central to the merits, the district court should resolve the relevant factual disputes only after appropriate discovery.” (internal alterations, quotation marks, and citations omitted)). By contrast, only under Rule 12(b)(6) does it matter whether the district court violated Rule 12(d)’s limitation on what materials the court can rely on without converting the motion to dismiss into one for summary judgment. Accord Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(d) (specifying the process a court must follow when converting a Rule 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss to a motion for summary judgment after a district court has been presented with and not excluded “matters outside the pleadings”); Hall v. Virginia, 385 F.3d 421, 424 n.3 (4th Cir. 2004) (observing that a court does not convert a motion to dismiss to a motion for summary judgment when it takes judicial notice of public records); Zak v. Chelsea Therapeutics Int’l Ltd., 780 F.3d 597, 607 (4th Cir. 2015) (same, for judicial notice of adjudicative facts under Federal Rule of Evidence 201). In some cases it could be appropriate to remand for the district court to clarify the basis for its determination. Here, however, we must vacate the district court’s ruling because dismissing the Complaint under either Rule 12(b)(1) or 13 Rule 12(b)(6) was incorrect. A remand for clarification would thus be pointless.
“To ward off profligate use of the term ‘jurisdiction,’” the Supreme Court “adopted a ‘readily administrable bright line’ for determining whether to classify a statutory limitation as jurisdictional.” Sebelius v. Auburn Reg’l Med. Ctr., 133 S. Ct. 817, 824 (2013) (quoting Arbaugh v. Y & H Corp. 546 U.S. 500, 516 (2006)). Absent Congress “clearly stat[ing] that a threshold limitation on a statute’s scope shall count as jurisdictional,” “courts should treat the restriction as nonjurisdictional in character.” Arbaugh, 546 U.S. at 515, 516. Assuming the district court viewed the RCRA anti-duplication provision as jurisdictional, and dismissed under Rule 12(b)(1) for lack of jurisdiction, it erred. 5 While the anti-duplication provision may ultimately bar a plaintiff from obtaining relief in a RCRA suit, that result does not mean that the statutory limitation is a jurisdictional 5The district court’s opinion gives us some basis for inferring that it relied on Rule 12(b)(1). Most pointedly, the district court addressed the claims against CBAC Gaming in a different section than the one containing the heading: “Failure to State a Claim Under Rule 12(b)(6) and Iqbal/Twombly,” which introduces the court’s analysis as to the other defendants. (J.A. 82.) 14 barrier to recovery. See Arbaugh, 546 U.S. at 515. Instead, when we examine its plain language, § 6905(a) does not suggest a jurisdictional character: Nothing in this chapter [i.e., RCRA] shall be construed to apply to (or to authorize any State, interstate, or local authority to regulate) any activity or substance which is subject to the [CWA] . . . except to the extent that such application (or regulation) is not inconsistent with the requirements of [the CWA, among other federal statutes]. § 6905(a). The statute simply instructs that RCRA provisions must give way when enforcement would be “inconsistent” with any of the other delineated acts. See Coon ex rel. Coon v. Willet Dairy, LP, 536 F.3d 171, 174 (2d Cir. 2008) (relying on the antiduplication provision to prohibit plaintiff’s RCRA claims challenging identical activities authorized by a CWA-based permit). Given § 6905(a)’s silence as to jurisdiction and the Supreme Court’s guidance, we conclude that the anti-duplication provision implicates the viability of an RCRA cause of action rather than the court’s jurisdiction to hear the claim. See Verizon Md., Inc. v. PSC, 535 U.S. 635, 642-43 (2002) (“‘[T]he absence of a valid (as opposed to arguable) cause of action does not implicate subject-matter jurisdiction, i.e., the court’s statutory or constitutional power to adjudicate the case.’ As we have said, ‘the district court has jurisdiction if the right of the petitioners to recover under their complaint will be 15 sustained if the Constitution and laws of the United States are given one construction and will be defeated if they are given another,’ unless the claim ‘clearly appears to be immaterial and made solely for the purpose of obtaining jurisdiction or where such a claim is wholly insubstantial and frivolous.’” (quoting Steel Co. v. Citizens for Better Env’t, 523 U.S. 83, 89 (1998))). Viewed through this lens, the anti-duplication provision is more in the nature of an affirmative defense like the statute of limitations or the failure to exhaust administrative remedies, which are to be timely asserted by a defendant who chooses to do so. See Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church & Sch. v. EEOC, 132 S. Ct. 694, 709 n.4 (2012) (noting a dispute amongst federal circuit courts as to whether the ministerial exception to employment discrimination claims was “a jurisdictional bar or a defense on the merits,” and concluding that it “operates as an affirmative defense to an otherwise cognizable claim, not a jurisdictional bar . . . because the issue presented by the exception is ‘whether the allegations the plaintiff makes entitle him to relief,’ not whether the court has ‘power to hear the case’” (internal quotation marks and alterations omitted)). Accordingly, it would have been error to dismiss the Complaint against CBAC Gaming for lack of subject matter jurisdiction pursuant to Rule 16 12(b)(1) because a defense to liability under RCRA based on § 6905(a) does not implicate jurisdiction.
In a Rule 12(b)(6) context, the reviewing court must determine whether the complaint alleges sufficient facts “to raise a right to relief above the speculative level” and “to state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face.” Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 555, 570 (2007). This directive ordinarily limits a court’s review to the “well-pled facts in the complaint[, which it must view] in the light most favorable to the plaintiff.” Brockington v. Boykins, 637 F.3d 503, 505 (4th Cir. 2011); see also Clatterbuck v. City of Charlottesville, 708 F.3d 549, 557 (4th Cir. 2013). While no absolute bar exists, a motion to dismiss under Rule 12(b)(6) does not typically resolve the applicability of defenses to a well-pled claim. See Tobey v. Jones, 706 F.3d 379, 387 (4th Cir. 2013) (stating a motion to dismiss under Rule 12(b)(6) “does not resolve contests surrounding facts, the merits of a claim, or the applicability of defenses”). Under narrow circumstances, a court may rely on extrinsic materials to determine a motion to dismiss without converting the proceeding into a motion for summary judgment. See Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(d) (discussing when conversion occurs and what 17 process must be followed to make it proper); see also Zak, 780 F.3d at 606-07 (discussing when extrinsic materials may be considered without implicating Rule 12(d)). For example, a court may properly take judicial notice of “matters of public record” and other information that, under Federal Rule of Evidence 201, constitute “adjudicative facts.” 6 Philips v. Pitt Cnty. Mem’l Hosp., 572 F.3d 176, 180 (4th Cir. 2009); see Fed. R. Evid. 201(b) (stating, in relevant part, that a “court may judicially notice a fact that is not subject to reasonable dispute because it” “can be accurately and readily determined from sources whose accuracy cannot reasonably be questioned”); Clatterbuck, 708 F.3d at 557 (“[C]ourts may consider relevant facts obtained from the public record, so long as these facts are construed in the light most favorable to the plaintiff along with the well-pleaded allegations of the complaint.” (internal quotation marks omitted)). The parties raise multiple arguments regarding the district court taking judicial notice of certain “facts” in order to decide the motion to dismiss, if indeed the district court did so. Goldfarb asserts the district court converted the motion to dismiss into a motion for summary judgment in violation of Rule 12(d). CBAC Gaming responds that the court did not violate this 6 “Adjudicative facts are simply the facts of the particular case.” Fed. R. Evid. 201, Advisory Committee’s note. 18 provision because it could have properly taken judicial notice of each of the exhibits it relied on as the basis for its analysis. In particular, it contends that the NPDES permit, the City-approved erosion and sediment control plans and stormwater management plans, and the RAP are each public records containing adjudicative facts subject to judicial notice under Rule 201 of the Federal Rules of Evidence. 7 CBAC Gaming maintains that once the district court in effect took judicial notice of those exhibits and their contents, it was free to interpret their meaning and draw legal conclusions. Goldfarb, in turn, replies that the district court never claimed it was taking judicial notice and therefore necessarily failed to identify what facts it was noticing or provide Goldfarb with notice and an opportunity to respond. Furthermore, Goldfarb contends the exhibits are not public records and that even if the court could properly take notice of their existence, it erred by then relying on their contents for the truth of the matters asserted therein. 7 For example, CBAC Gaming points to language in the NPDES permit not only requiring it to “develop and obtain approval . . . of . . . erosion and sediment control plans . . . and . . . stormwater management plans,” Appellees’ Designated Exhibits (“Ex.”) 169 (§ II.A.3), but also stating that “[v]iolations of plans for construction activity, including applicable Erosion and Sediment Control and Stormwater Management Plans, constitute violations of this permit, State law, and the CWA.” (Ex. 176, § VI.A.) It then notes that those plans, in turn, were “subject to the provisions in the final RAP.” (Ex. 26, § C 50-06.) 19 Goldfarb is correct at least to the extent that the district court did not explicitly state that it was taking judicial notice of particular “facts,” let alone identify what those “facts” were. Nevertheless, even if we assume that the taking of judicial notice was part of the court’s decisional process, we need not address whether the act of taking such notice was erroneous. There are two reasons for this conclusion: First, regardless of how the district court proceeded, we, too, are authorized to take judicial notice in an appropriate case. Fed. R. Evid. 201(d) (“The court may take judicial notice at any stage of the proceeding.”); Massey v. Ojaniit, 759 F.3d 343, 353 (4th Cir. 2014) (observing that an appellate court may take judicial notice of the same materials as could a district court). Second, even assuming the district court could properly take judicial notice of the contents of the exhibits, the court’s specific legal analysis was incorrect. To grant the motion to dismiss under Rule 12(b)(6), the district court would have to conclude that § 6905(a) barred a RCRA cause of action as pled against CBAC Gaming because enforcement of RCRA would be “inconsistent” with the CWA. The district court opined to that effect, stating that any “further remedial requirements imposed under RCRA would be inconsistent with the remedial activities already deemed appropriate” for the 20 Casino Site pursuant to the CWA (via the NPDES permit and the documents it incorporated). (J.A. 81.) Since § 6905(a) (or any other RCRA provision of which we are aware) does not define “inconsistent,” we give this word its ordinary dictionary meaning: “lacking consistency: incompatible, incongruous, inharmonious . . . so related that both or all cannot be true.” Webster’s Third Int’l Dictionary 1144; see also Black’s Law Dictionary (10th ed.) (“Lacking agreement among parts; not compatible with another fact or claim.”); Oxford English Dictionary (“at variance, discordant, in compatible, incongruous”). To be “inconsistent” for purposes of § 6905(a), then, the CWA must require something fundamentally at odds with what RCRA would otherwise require. See Edison Elec. Inst. v. EPA, 996 F.2d 326, 337 (D.C. Cir. 1993) (rejecting antiduplication provision argument where petitioners were “unable to point to any direct conflict between” RCRA and another act listed in § 6905(a)). RCRA mandates that are just different, or even greater, than what the CWA requires are not necessarily the equivalent of being “inconsistent” with the CWA. Although the district court recited the statutory term “inconsistent,” it undertook no analysis in its opinion to determine whether a conflict actually existed between the applicable RCRA regulations and the CWA, much less what constituted such a conflict. Instead, the district court’s 21 analysis overstates when regulation pursuant to RCRA yields to the CWA. It is not enough that the activity or substance is already regulated under the CWA; it must also be “incompatible, incongruous, inharmonious.” The district court’s conclusion is thus built on the faulty premise that the CWA and RCRA cannot regulate the same activity under any circumstance. 8 See New Mexico v. Watkins, 969 F.2d 1122, 1131 (D.C. Cir. 1992) (stating § 6905(a) “contemplates joint regulation under both RCRA and [another act listed in § 6905(a)] in certain circumstances”). The district court never stated what the NPDES permit, erosion and sediment control and stormwater management plans, or RAP regulated that was “inconsistent” with the alleged obligations of CBAC Gaming under RCRA. Nor did the court examine what actions Goldfarb pled CBAC Gaming was required to undertake to comply with RCRA that were “inconsistent” with the NPDES permit and its derivative documents. The district court simply did not undertake a basic comparison, at least not one discernible from the record, to consider whether RCRA would have required anything of CBAC 8 The district court also found it significant that Goldfarb’s Complaint did not argue that CBAC Gaming had violated any of the erosion and sediment control and stormwater management plans or the RAP. This, too, does not resolve the inconsistency inquiry under the anti-duplication statute because CBAC Gaming could be in full compliance with those requirements and yet still be in violation of RCRA. 22 Gaming that would be “inconsistent” with what CBAC Gaming was already required to do to comply with the CWA. Instead, the district court broadly concluded that since all of CBAC Gaming’s construction activities would satisfy the CWA as a result of the CWA’s permit shield, requiring anything “further” under RCRA would be “inconsistent” with the CWA. As set forth above, more was required. We therefore vacate and remand the district court’s decision, if based on Rule 12(b)(6), for the failure to identify how the Complaint’s RCRA allegations are “inconsistent” with the CWA. But in so doing, we also note that the procedural posture of this case presents a further ground of concern relating back to the proper scope of a court’s review of matters outside the pleadings and the taking of judicial notice. The maze of cross-references to exhibits and interpretations of specific provisions within them makes this case particularly ill-suited to adjudication at the motion to dismiss stage. As noted, CBAC Gaming raised the anti-duplication provision as a potential defense to liability, and it relied almost exclusively on exhibits outside the Complaint in doing so. That alone inclines against deciding the case under Rule 12(b)(6). See Goodman v. Praxair, Inc., 494 F.3d 458, 464 (4th Cir. 2007) (discussing “the relatively rare circumstances where facts sufficient to rule on an affirmative defense are alleged in the 23 complaint” such that the defense could be the basis for dismissal under Rule 12(b)(6)). Furthermore, the parties vehemently disagree about the nature and scope of the NPDES permit and other exhibits, putting at issue basic factual matters relevant to interpreting what those exhibits mean and how they relate to the RCRA claims pled against CBAC Gaming. We have intentionally bypassed these arguments and refrained from mining the exhibits to determine what, if anything, we could take judicial notice of on appeal. See Ohio Valley Envtl. Coal. v. Aracoma Coal Co., 556 F.3d 177, 216 (4th Cir. 2009) (declining to take judicial notice of permit decision documents and other exhibits because the party seeking notice sought “notice of its own interpretation of the contents of those documents” and not just notice of their existence). We are mindful that judicial notice must not “be used as an expedient for courts to consider ‘matters beyond the pleadings’ and thereby upset the procedural rights of litigants to present evidence on disputed matters.” Waugh Chapel S., LLC v. United Food & Commercial Workers Union Local, 728 F.3d 354, 360 (4th Cir. 2013). 24 For all these reasons, we vacate the district court’s judgment granting CBAC Gaming’s motion to dismiss, and remand for further proceedings consistent with this opinion. 9