Court Opinion

ID: 9491918
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 14:27:41.061188+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:55:00.909560
License: Public Domain

NIEMEYER, Circuit Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part:
I concur in Part VII of the majority’s opinion, holding that Gatlin Oil is not entitled to an award of interest against the United States. I differ with the majority, however, on the proper reading of 33 U.S.C. § 2702 of the Oil Pollution Act (“OPA”), which controls the disposition of Gatlin Oil’s claim for removal costs and damages resulting from vandals’ opening a spigot and setting fire at Gatlin Oil’s facility.
Under 33 U.S.C. §§ 2708 and 2713 of the OPA, Gatlin Oil is entitled to removal costs and damages from the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund (“Fund”) if it is a party responsible for removal costs and damages but has a defense that the discharge or threat of discharge of oil into navigable waters was caused by the act or omission of a third-party. In that case, the responsible party would be entitled to recover from the Fund “removal costs and damages ... that result from such incident.” 33 U.S.C. § 2702(a). As a defined term in the OPA, “incident” means “any occurrence or series of occurrences having the same origin, involving one or more vessels, facilities, or any combination thereof, resulting in the discharge or some substantial threat of discharge of oil.” 33 U.S.C. § 2701(14). Accordingly, I would hold that the vandals’ opening of an oil storage tank spigot and setting fire to the oil is an incident for which Gatlin Oil would be entitled to both its removal costs and its damages.
The majority reads “incident” as used in § 2702(a) to have as its antecedent the discharge of oil or the threat of discharge of oil, as referred to earlier in § 2702(a). Its argument is based on the fact that the word “incident” is modified by the word “such,” suggesting the limitation of that term in this paragraph to the antecedent as an example of “incident.”
While I remain convinced that incident must mean the defined term, even if the interpretation given by the majority is the correct one, Gatlin would nevertheless be entitled to its damages because those damages “resulted from” the vandals’ discharge of oil, a discharge which both polluted navi*215gable waters and immediately threatened to pollute navigable waters. That a fire ensued after the oil spigot was opened should have no bearing on Gatlin Oil’s ability to recover from the Fund. The statutory test — whether fire damage “resulted from” the discharge of oil that threatened to pollute navigable waters — was still satisfied. For these reasons, I would permit Gatlin Oil to recover all damages flowing from the oil spill incident that occurred on March 13, 1994, and not restrict its recovery to a portion of its removal costs.
I would, however, remand this appeal to the district court for recalculation of Gatlin Oil’s lost earnings resulting from the discharge of oil. The district court’s prior calculation resulted in an award of speculative damages which I believe is unsupported by the record and in contravention of § 2702(b)(2)(E).