Opinion ID: 779089
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Defendants' Tenth Amendment Challenge

Text: 155 Defendants also contend that the FRCD violates the Tenth Amendment, arguing that it effectively alters certain state statutes of limitations, overruling important policy choices made by a state legislature that had evaluated and balanced the competing interests, and that the FRCD improperly coerces states to regulate state-law toxic tort claims according to a federal formula. Notwithstanding the skepticism expressed in ABB Industrial Systems, Inc. v. Prime Technology, Inc., in which we stated that the FRCD was of questionable constitutionality, 120 F.3d at 360 n. 5, while noting that the issue was not properly before us, see id., we reject defendants' challenge. 156 The Tenth Amendment provides that [t]he powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people. U.S. Const. amend. X. The Tenth Amendment limits Congress's regulatory power, preventing Congress from essentially commandeering a state's legislative or executive departments `by directly compelling them to enact and enforce a federal regulatory program.' New York v. United States, 505 U.S. at 161, 112 S.Ct. 2408 (quoting Hodel v. Virginia Surface Mining & Reclamation Ass'n, 452 U.S. at 288, 101 S.Ct. 2352); see also Printz v. United States, 521 U.S. 898, 935, 117 S.Ct. 2365, 138 L.Ed.2d 914 (1997) (Congress may no[t] command the States' officers, or those of their political subdivisions, to administer or enforce a federal regulatory program). 157 The FRCD, however, does not conscript into federal service either the state's legislature or its executive branch. Rather, in order that persons victimized by exposure to hazardous wastes not be deprive[d] ... of their day in court, FRCD Conf. Rep. at 261, reprinted in 1986 U.S.C.C.A.N. at 3354, and that the companies that substantive state law would hold responsible not escape liability, the FRCD simply requires courts in which state-law toxic tort claims are asserted to recognize that such a claim did not accrue before the plaintiff knew or reasonably should have known the cause of the injury. This is a modest requirement that is squarely within Congress's long established powers under the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution. 158 The Supremacy Clause provides that the Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof ... shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding. U.S. Const. art. VI, cl. 2 (emphasis added). Accordingly, consistent with the Tenth Amendment, Congress may create federal causes of action that state courts are obligated to adjudicate. See, e.g., Testa v. Katt, 330 U.S. 386, 67 S.Ct. 810, 91 L.Ed. 967 (1947). Or it may enact a federal law that preempts a state-law cause of action, thereby foreclosing state courts from entertaining such a state-law claim. See generally English v. General Electric Co., 496 U.S. 72, 78-79, 110 S.Ct. 2270, 110 L.Ed.2d 65 (1990). Or Congress may, as it has done on occasion, simply extend a state limitations period. See, e.g., Stewart v. Kahn, 78 U.S. (11 Wall.) 493, 20 L.Ed. 176 (1870) (upholding federal statute tolling limitations periods for actions against persons who could not be served with process because they were in Confederate territory); see also 50 U.S.C. app. § 525 (tolling limitations periods for actions by or against persons in active military service); 28 U.S.C. § 1367(d) (tolling state limitations period on state claim asserted in federal court based on supplemental jurisdiction, if federal court thereafter declines to exercise such jurisdiction); 15 U.S.C. § 6603(h) (extending limitations periods for mortgage foreclosure actions where Y2K-related failures impeded processing of mortgage payments). 159 Simply put, the Tenth Amendment does not prevent the application of federal law in state courts even though [f]ederal statutes enforceable in state courts do, in a sense, direct state judges to enforce them, because this sort of federal `direction' of state judges is mandated by the text of the Supremacy Clause. New York v. United States, 505 U.S. at 178-79, 112 S.Ct. 2408. The FRCD, which requires no action by a state's legislative or executive officials, but only the application of federal law by the courts to recognize the Federal Commencement Date of a state-law claim, does not violate the Tenth Amendment. 160 Having rejected all of defendants' statutory interpretation and constitutional challenges to the application of the FRCD, we turn to plaintiffs' challenges to the district court's dismissal of their claims. 161 D. Plaintiffs' Challenge to the Ruling That, As a Matter of Law, the FRCD Was Not Later Than the End of 1991 162 As discussed in Part I.F. above, the district court granted summary judgment dismissing plaintiffs' claims as time-barred on the ground that there was no genuine issue of fact to be tried as to the date on which their claims accrued under the FRCD, ruling that, as a matter of law, that date was no later than the end of 1991. In so ruling, the court found principally that the government and media reports and public controversy over the health hazards posed by the Landfill sufficed to give plaintiffs a reasonable suspicion as to the cause of their cancers prior to the end of 1991, Pfohl II, 68 F.Supp.2d at 253, and that plaintiffs failed to show why it was not possible to obtain a `scientific' opinion similar to the one contained in the Rigle-Sawyer Report earlier than 1994, id. at 259. We have several difficulties with the legal standards applied by the district court and with its view of the factual record. 163
164 First, the district court erroneously imputed to the Federal Commencement Date a standard of reasonable suspicion. See, e.g., Pfohl II, 68 F.Supp.2d at 253 (plaintiffs should have developed a reasonable suspicion as to the cause of their injuries prior to the end of 1991 (emphasis added)); id. at 254 (given the volume of information available to the public prior to 1992, Plaintiffs could be expected to reasonably suspect the cause of their cancers before the end of 1991 (emphasis added)); id. at 257 (no reasonable trier of fact could find that Plaintiffs, had they been reasonably diligent in inquiring as to the cause of their cancers upon being diagnosed, would not have discovered sufficient information to develop a reasonable suspicion as to the cause of such injuries prior to the end of 1991 (emphasis added)). In so reasoning, the district court apparently accepted Defendants['] conten[tion] that a reasonable suspicion that an injury may have been caused by exposure to toxic or hazardous substances is sufficient to trigger a rule of limitations that is predicated on knowledge of a fact or event,  id. at 252 (emphases added). Insofar as the FRCD is concerned, this contention should have been rejected. 165 The discovery-of-cause standard set by the FRCD, defined as the date the plaintiff knew (or reasonably should have known) that the personal injury was caused or contributed to by the hazardous materials, focuses on knowledge, actual or imputed, not on suspicion. Mere suspicion, whatever its reasonableness, cannot be equated with knowledge; and the fact that a claimant had only a reasonable suspicion that the injuries were caused by the Landfill is not a sufficient basis for ruling as a matter of law that the claimant reasonably should have known  (emphasis added) that the injuries were caused by the Landfill. Accordingly, the district court applied an erroneous legal standard in interpreting the FRCD. 166 Second, in addressing the showing that a plaintiff is required to make under New York's CPLR § 214-c(4) as to the state of scientific or medical knowledge as to the cause of injury, the court applied a standard of impossibility of such knowledge. See, e.g., Pfohl II, 68 F.Supp.2d at 248 (plaintiffs were required to show that the state of medical, technological and scientific knowledge and information was insufficient such that it was not possible to discover the cause of their injuries within time to commence the instant actions within three years from the discovery of their cancers (emphasis added)); id. at 257 (Plaintiffs have failed to establish the existence of a material issue of fact that such cause could not have been determined prior to the end of 1991 (emphasis added)). As discussed below, it is not clear to us that this is a correct interpretation of the CPLR provision as a matter of state law; but it is clear that to the extent the CPLR provision would result in an earlier accrual date than that provided by the FRCD, the CPLR provision is preempted. 167 The district court's interpretation that a plaintiff must show that the cause of the injury could not have been determined within three years after the date of discovery of the injury does not match the language of the statute itself. That section states that if the action is not filed within that period the plaintiff is required to show that, prior to the expiration of that period, technical, scientific or medical knowledge and information sufficient to ascertain the cause of his injury had not been discovered, identified or determined. N.Y.C.P.L.R. § 214-c(4) (emphasis added). (We note that, though the phrase had not been is straightforward enough, some joinders of subjects and predicates in this passage are somewhat awkward: For example, is scientific knowledge discovered? Is scientific knowledge determined — and if so, does the word determined connote a consensus? And does scientific knowledge mean, as the district court viewed it in Pfohl II, 68 F.Supp.2d at 259, `scientific' opinion? See also N.Y.C.P.L.R. § 214-c Practice Commentaries, C214-c:4, at 635 (The statute reeks of the midnight oil of political compromise.... [T]he draftsmanship cannot be described as commendable.).) 168 Despite the difference between the district court's phrase could not have been determined and the statute's phrase had not been determined, the district court's standard finds some explicit — but not unequivocal — support in the New York practice commentaries. For example, the official commentator states that the plaintiff must demonstrate [a] that the state of medical or scientific knowledge was such that the causation of his injury could not have been identified within the three-year period after the discovery of the injury, N.Y.C.P.L.R. § 214-c(4) Practice Commentaries, C214-c:4, at 634-35 (emphasis added), and [b] that it was impossible to determine the cause of his injury within three years after the discovery of his injury, id. at 635 (emphasis added). To that extent, therefore, the official commentary supports the district court's view of New York law. 169 Nonetheless, the official commentary also, after noting the less-than-commendable legislative draftsmanship, states that the New York Legislature apparently intended... [that] the test should be: Was the requisite scientific knowledge reasonably available to the plaintiff during the three-year discovery period? N.Y.C.P.L.R. § 214-c Practice Commentaries, C214-c:4, at 635 (emphasis added). This seems to us the more reasonable interpretation of New York law, for the district court's construction would seem to place burdens on a would-be plaintiff that the Legislature could not have intended. For example, the district court stated that plaintiffs could not meet the cause-could-not-have-been-determined standard because, before the end of 1991, they could have commissioned experts to conduct environmental studies and prepare a report such as the Rigle-Sawyer report. However, `the reasonable cost of a site-specific study to determine whether there has been an excess number of cancer cases related to a multiple toxic agent environmental cause such as the Pfohl Brothers Landfill would be at least two (2) million dollars. ' (Van Pelt Aff. ¶ 41 (quoting ¶ 6 of the Affidavit of Dr. Rosalie Bertell, an expert in environmental epidemiology with more than 30 years of experience) (emphases in original).) We doubt that the New York Legislature meant to refer to scientific knowledge that would not have been available to a plaintiff without the expenditure of huge sums of money to commission independent studies. And we certainly cannot conclude that Congress meant the FRCD standard of what a plaintiff reasonably should have known to extend to information that was obtainable only through the private commissioning of expensive studies. 170 We think it likely that the official commentary's suggestion that the New York Legislature intended CPLR § 214-c(4) to refer only to scientific knowledge that was reasonably available to the plaintiff is the correct interpretation of that section. And we think it possible that in intending to set a reasonable-availability-of-knowledge-of-cause standard, the New York Legislature meant to fix an accrual date no earlier than the date the plaintiff knew or reasonably should have known the cause of the injury — i.e., the same accrual date as that set by the FRCD. To the extent, however, that the scientific-knowledge provision of CPLR § 214-c(4) imposes an accrual date earlier than the date on which the plaintiff knew or reasonably should have known the cause of the injury, it is, for the reasons discussed in Part II.A. above, preempted by the FRCD. 171
172 We also conclude that the district court did not correctly apply the principles applicable to the consideration of a motion for summary judgment. In assessing such a motion, the court is required to view the factual record in the light most favorable to the party against whom summary judgment is sought and to draw all factual inferences in favor of that party. See, e.g., Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc., 477 U.S. 242, 255, 106 S.Ct. 2505, 91 L.Ed.2d 202 (1986); United States v. Diebold, Inc., 369 U.S. 654, 655, 82 S.Ct. 993, 8 L.Ed.2d 176 (1962) (per curiam). The district court, while adverting to this standard, did not apply it. 173 In ruling that the FRCD was no later than the end of 1991, the district court relied on the fact that Defendants ha[d] submitted a plethora of exhibits, principally consisting of government and media reports; the court found that these documents establish[ed] that a highly publicized controversy existed within the local community over whether the Landfill posed a threat to the health and safety of those who resided or worked in the vicinity of the Landfill; and the court concluded that these documents should have raised in plaintiffs a reasonable suspicion as to the cause of their injuries. Pfohl II, 68 F.Supp.2d at 253. The court accepted defendants' argument that 174 as after 1991 there were no new government studies, releases of previously undisclosed information, nor any medical or scientific breakthroughs on which Plaintiffs rely as having permitted them to discover the cause of their cancers, Plaintiffs have failed to establish the existence of a material issue of fact that such cause could not have been determined prior to the end of 1991. 175 Id. at 257. We have two difficulties with the court's reliance on the documents submitted by defendants. 176 First, many of defendants' documents themselves reflected the absence of any scientific knowledge that the Landfill was carcinogenic; and indeed, reports of expert studies suggested that it was not. For example, defendants submitted an October 11, 1988 DEC letter to Concerned Citizen[s], that stated, inter alia, that the low radiation levels found in areas of the Landfill does not present any immediate threat to public health. And among the statements in news articles submitted by defendants were the following: radiation levels at the Pfohl Landfill, according to DEC and DOH, pose no threat to the public ( The Buffalo News, October 14, 1988); radiation risks from the Pfohl Landfill, according to State expert, are `very, very minimal' ( The Buffalo News, November 2, 1989); `exposure to radiation on the site,' according to DEC, `presents little, if any, public health hazard' ( The Buffalo News, March 30, 1990); and [n]o health threat found in [DOH's] Pfohl Road soil tests ( The Buffalo News, November 15, 1990). 177 Even the most alarming DOH report, issued in March 1991 and reporting excess numbers of certain types of cancers in 1978-1987, was, accurately, described in news articles as being accompanied by State officials' denials of any clear linkages between the cancers and the Landfill. See, e.g., The Buffalo News, March 26, 1991 (DOH study finds higher than expected instances of lymphoma and leukemias, but not high enough to be classified as a `significant excess' statistically; the increase is likely related to income, socioeconomic and status factors; DOH `can't tell whether the landfill is responsible'). 178 Thus, the district court inappropriately failed to view the documents submitted by defendants in the light most favorable to plaintiffs as the parties against whom summary judgment was sought. While defendants provided abundant evidence of the existence of controversy, much of what they submitted was either equivocal as to whether the Landfill could be causing cancers or contained outright denials of such causation. No doubt the lack of any indication in these reports and articles that there was scientific knowledge that the Landfill was carcinogenic was an impetus for defendants' urging the district court that the reasonably-should-have known standard of § 9658 could be satisfied by showing a basis merely for reasonable suspicion. 179 Our second difficulty with the district court's application of summary judgment principles is that, in reaching its conclusions as to the date on which plaintiffs reasonably should have known the cause of the injuries, the district court did not acknowledge the inferences available to plaintiffs from the record as a whole. Even had the documents submitted by defendants supported an inference of early constructive knowledge rather than simply of suspicion, the court was required to consider not just those documents but also the evidence submitted by plaintiffs. The court's opinion does not indicate that it did so. For example, although noting that there were no new revelatory government studies after 1991, Pfohl II, 68 F.Supp.2d at 257, the court apparently did not take into account the fact that the latest studies done in 1991 gave plaintiffs no reason whatever to know that the cancers were caused by the Landfill. As described in Part I.E.2. above, DOH's follow-up studies on cancer incidence, reported in November 1991, revealed no linkage with the Pfohl Landfill. The Melius affidavit described the results of those studies, the reasoning of DOH in reaching its conclusions, and the statements made by State officials to area residents that no ... documented evidence existed of a health threat posed by the Pfohl Landfill (Melius Aff. ¶ 13). 180 The publicity surrounding the November 1991 DOH reports surely gave plaintiffs no reason to know the cancers were caused by the Landfill. The Buffalo News on December 17, 1991, carried the headline Study can't link Pfohl landfill to cancer and reported that the DOH follow-up study of the higher-than-expected rates of cancers in the same census tract as the Landfill failed to uncover any evidence of `clustering' of prostate cancer, leukemia, lymphoma and female lung cancer near the inactive dump. Similarly, the Cheektowaga Times on December 26, 1991, carried the headline Health Department studies fail to link landfill to cancer and reported that [a]ccording to recent reports released by the New York State Department of Health, no link exists between the Pfohl Brothers Landfill site and cancer incidence for those residen[ts] living on or near the dump site. 181 Subsequent articles, as well as state and federal governmental studies, continued after 1991 to report the lack of any discovery of a link between the cancers and the Landfill. See, e.g., Cheektowaga Times, December 2, 1993 (Ground water uncontaminated near Pfohl dump; Ground water surrounding the Pfohl Brothers dump has turned up clean in all studies performed so far.); The Buffalo News, August 26, 1994 (Two studies by federal and state agencies refute charges that contamination from the Pfohl Brothers dump in Cheektowaga has caused serious health problems.); August 1994 DOH report (with letter to residents of Cheektowaga stating that none of the patterns of a true cancer cluster were found.... No evidence was found for a common environmental cause.); August 1994 USATSDR report (available data [on the Pfohl Landfill] do not indicate exposures to contaminants in the environmental media to be high enough to cause adverse health effects;  no apparent public health hazard at the present time (emphasis in original)). 182 Consistent with the tenor of these news reports, Dr. Melius, who was the director of the pertinent DOH division throughout this period, stated in his affidavit that he informed area residents that there were many possible explanations for observed incidences of cancer, including socioeconomic factors, improved screening practices, personal lifestyle, and medical history. And in the many meetings and communications with area residents, neither Dr. Melius nor any other member of DOH ever told any member of the public that the cancer cases in the area were in any way related to the Pfohl Brothers landfill. ( See, e.g., Melius Aff. ¶¶ 6, 15.) 183 There is no question that defendants submitted to the district court numerous documents showing that there were local concerns and controversies as to whether health problems were being caused by the Pfohl Landfill. And if notice of controversy were the issue, defendants' motion for summary judgment would have had greater merit. But that is not the standard for determining the Federal Commencement Date, and the record did not permit the court to conclude that no reasonable fact-finder could fail to infer that plaintiffs reasonably should have known prior to the end of 1991 that the Landfill was the cause of the injuries. 184 In sum, many studies had been done by two State agencies, DOH and DEC. There is no evidence that they found the Pfohl Landfill to cause cancers, and the record is replete with evidence that the State officials repeatedly assured residents, both through the publicized reports and in personal meetings, that there was no evidence of such causation. We cannot endorse the proposition that, as a matter of law, when reports issued by the responsible public officials stated that there was no provable link between the cancers and the Landfill, members of the public reasonably should have known to the contrary. E. The Length of the Limitations Period 185 Finally, plaintiffs also contend that the district court ruled, erroneously, that their survival claims were governed by a one-year limitations period. We do not so interpret the court's opinion. 186 The FRCD preempts a more restrictive state law only with respect to the date on which a claim accrues, not with respect to the length of the limitations period. See 42 U.S.C. § 9658(a)(1) (if the applicable [state or common-law] limitations period ... provides a commencement date which is earlier than the federally required commencement date, such period shall commence at the federally required commencement date in lieu of the [state-law] date (emphasis added)). Thus, New York law still controls with respect to the length of the limitations period. Section 214-c, as modified by the FRCD, gives the plaintiff one year from the date of discovery of the cause of the injury to commence a lawsuit (or three years from the date of discovery of the injury, if longer) and that provision satisfies the requirements of the FRCD. 187 Plaintiffs advert to statements by the district court that are somewhat elliptical standing alone. See, e.g., Pfohl I, 26 F.Supp.2d at 531 (the one year period provided by § 214-c(4) will attach to the claim upon discovery of the cause of the injury, as the FRCD permits, regardless of how much time has elapsed since the discovery of the injury  (emphasis added)); Pfohl II, 68 F.Supp.2d at 249 (referring to the proviso to § 214-c(4) limiting the benefit of the extra year within which to file a toxic tort claim to a maximum period of five years from discovery of the injury). These statements, however, were made only in the court's discussion of the effect of the FRCD. 188 In directly interpreting the New York limitations periods, the court had noted that under § 214-c(4), 189 if the plaintiff discovers the cause of a toxic tort injury within five years of the discovery of the injury, the plaintiff may invoke the longer of (a) the three year period from the discovery of the injury or (b) a one year period from the discovery of the cause within which to commence an action. 190 Pfohl I, 26 F.Supp.2d at 521 (emphasis in original); see also Pfohl II, 68 F.Supp.2d at 247 (`an action may be commenced or a claim filed within one year of such discovery of the cause of the injury,' provided less than five years have elapsed since the discovery of the injury (emphasis omitted)). These rulings were correct, and we do not view the court's subsequent shorthand references as overturning its direct interpretation of § 214-c. 191 In context, the elliptical statements quoted above were intended simply to indicate that the effect of the FRCD, where suit was not brought within three years of the discovery-of-injury date, is to allow a plaintiff to bring suit within one year after discovery of the cause of an injury, even if more than five years have elapsed since discovery of the injury. We see no indication that the district court applied a different principle.