Court Opinion

ID: 9488106
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 12:36:40.532967+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:52:42.049618
License: Public Domain

O’SCANNLAIN, Circuit Judge,
dissenting in part:
I respectfully dissent from Part IV of the majority opinion.
Section 309(d) of the Clean Water Act (“the Act”) provides:
Any person who violates [one of the enumerated sections of the Act] shall be subject to a civil penalty not to exceed $25,000 per day for each violation.
33 U.S.C. § 1319(d) (emphasis added). The majority reads this language to mean that civil penalties are mandatory for proven violations of the Act. If section 309(d) had provided “Any person who violates ... shall pay a civil penalty,” I would readily agree with the majority’s interpretation. However, it does not so provide, and we cannot ignore the three words following the word “shall.” To do otherwise “violates the settled rule that a statute must, if possible, be construed in such a fashion that every word has some operative effect.” United States v. Nordic Village, Inc., 503 U.S. 30, 35, 112 S.Ct. 1011, 1015, 117 L.Ed.2d 181 (1991).
Section 309(d) did not use the words “shall pay”; it used the words “shall be subject to.” The latter phrase is synonymous with “shall be liable to” or “shall be answerable to.” Black’s Law Dictionary 1278 (5th ed. 1979). Read literally, the section merely states that a violator is liable to be assessed a civil penalty, not that he or she must be. In *1398other words, civil penalties are discretionary. Several district courts facing this question have come to this conclusion as well. See, e.g., Hawaii’s Thousand Friends v. Honolulu, 149 F.R.D. 614, 617 (D.Haw.1993); United States v. Bradshaw, 541 F.Supp. 880, 883 (D.Mass.1981). See also United States v. Winchester Mun. Util., 944 F.2d 301, 306 (6th Cir.1991) (suggesting that district courts that found civil penalties discretionary are correct).
If Congress had meant civil penalties to be mandatory, it could have written section 309(d) to state that a violator “shall pay” a civil penalty. Indeed, these are precisely the words it has chosen in numerous civil penalty provisions. See, e.g., 7 U.S.C. § 1596(a) (“Any person who ... violates any provision of this chapter ... shall pay a fine of not more than $1,000 ... ”) (emphasis added); 26 U.S.C. § 6038(b)(1) (“If any person fails to furnish ... any information ... required under [this section], such person shall pay a penalty of $1,000 ...”) (emphasis added).
In addition, to the extent it might be relevant, the Act’s legislative history reveals no congressional intent whatsoever to make civil penalties mandatory. The House Report to the 1972 Amendments simply states that “the courts are authorized to apply appropriate civil penalties under Section 309(d).” H.R.Rep. No. 911, 92nd Cong., 2d Sess. 133 (1972) (emphasis added). It does not suggest that Congress believed the courts are required to do so.
Even if section 309(d) were found to be ambiguous, the rule of lenity should counsel us to choose the interpretation least likely to impose penalties unintended by Congress. See National Org. for Women, Inc. v. Scheidler, — U.S. -, -, 114 S.Ct. 798, 806, 127 L.Ed.2d 99 (1994). The rule of lenity has not been limited to criminal statutes, particularly when the civil sanctions in question are punitive in character. See United States v. Thompson/Center Arms Co., 504 U.S. 505, 518 n. 10, 112 S.Ct. 2102, 2110 n. 10, 119 L.Ed.2d 308 (1992). The penalties contemplated by section 309(d) clearly have punitive purposes. Tull v. United States, 481 U.S. 412, 422-23, 107 S.Ct. 1831, 1838, 95 L.Ed.2d 365 (1987). Thus, section 309(d) should not be read to require civil penalties in all cases but only where the district court, in its discretion, finds them appropriate.
Undoubtedly, civil penalties will be imposed in most cases of proven violations of the Act; however, by leaving them to the district court’s discretion, more appropriate remedies may be fashioned in exceptional cases. For example, the district court may encounter situations in which the purposes of the Act are better served by seeing to it that the violator undertakes comprehensive corrective actions. See, e.g., Gwaltney v. Chesapeake Bay Found,., 484 U.S. 49, 60-61, 108 S.Ct. 376, 382-83, 98 L.Ed.2d 306 (1987) (suggesting that civil penalties might be inappropriate where violator agrees to take some extreme corrective action).
I would therefore reverse the district court’s “order regarding remedies” to the extent that it held that section 309(d) of the Act mandated that a civil monetary penalty be imposed for every violation of the Act.