Opinion ID: 1709662
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: penalties under the solid waste law

Text: ถ 36. To adopt the discovery rule in this instance would be to allow the State to punish those who violated a state law, as in this case, nearly 25 years prior to the commencement of any action by the State. As the 3M court noted, [f]ines, penalties and forfeitures, whether civil or criminal, may be considered a form of punishment. 3M, 17 F.3d at 1460 (citing Austin v. United States, 509 U.S. 602 (1993)). Although we concede that there is, as the State emphasized at oral argument, no possibility of jail time for Chrysler, we conclude that Wis. Stat. ง 144.57 (1969)'s authorization of penalties up to $5,000 per day serves, at least in part, to punish offenders of the Solid Waste Law. See, e.g., State v. Peterson, 104 Wis. 2d 616, 624, 312 N.W.2d 784 (1981) (noting that forfeiture actions are of a hybrid nature, i.e., part civil, part criminal); City of Milwaukee v. Wuky, 26 Wis. 2d 555, 561-62, 133 N.W.2d 356 (1965) (same). Thus, the State's attempt to impose penalties against Chrysler for a violation of the Solid Waste Law is more analogous to a criminal action than to the civil tort actions in which we have previously employed the discovery rule. [16] ถ 37. In criminal actions, the State is ordinarily subject to a statute of limitations barโit does not have unfettered discretion to prosecute at any time because liability for the offense attaches at the time the offense is committed. See, e.g., Wis. Stat. ง 939.74 (1995-96) (providing that prosecutions for felonies must be commenced within 6 years and misdemeanors within 3 years after commission of a crime, except in certain circumstances). As the United States Supreme Court concluded nearly 200 years ago, [i]n a country where not even treason can be prosecuted after a lapse of three years, it could scarcely be supposed that an individual would remain for ever liable to a pecuniary forfeiture. Adams v. Woods, 6 U.S. (2 Cranch) 336, 342, 2 L.Ed. 297 (1805) (Marshall, C.J.). Indeed, the inherently punitive nature of the present action increases Chrysler's need to be protected from stale claims brought decades after the violations occurred. ถ 38. These considerations lead us to the conclusion that the State's need for an expansive period of limitations in this remedial and punitive action is much less critical than that we have seen with the tort victims in our previous discovery rule cases. Under these circumstances, we see no reason to respond with the unilateral imposition of an open-ended, judicially-created discovery rule that for all practical purposes would apply to every environmental enforcement action brought by the State. [17] ถ 39. The State argues that defendants such as Chrysler will not be prejudiced in situations similar to the one at hand because the discovery rule will commence the statute of limitations when the State discovers or with reasonable diligence should have discovered the violation. According to the State, this standard puts a heavy burden on the regulatory agency to discover violations of the Solid Waste Law. We are not persuaded that the discovery standard which would require the State to exercise reasonable diligence, see Hansen, 113 Wis. 2d at 560, in discovering violations of the Solid Waste Law should alter our conclusion. This argument ignores our preeminent concern with the need to protect defendants from stale claims in all cases involving violations of the Solid Waste Law, not just those in which the State should have discovered a violation, but didn't because it failed to exercise reasonable diligence.