Court Opinion

ID: 9461924
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 22:27:52.775261+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:37:19.506633
License: Public Domain

NICHOLS, Judge
(dissenting):
Respectfully and reluctantly I dissent. It appears to me that the majority misconstrues the decision below, which I would affirm.
Defendant Russell E. Train, appellee here, moved to dismiss the complaint, or, in the alternative, for summary judgment. Since the court elected to dismiss, defendant’s reference to what he called “the administrative record filed herein” in support of summary judgment became irrelevant, and the distinguished judge quite properly did not consider whether it was complete. To dismiss the complaint, under Rule 12(b), F.R.C.P., he had to decide there was a lack of jurisdiction over the defendant, or over the subject matter of the suit, or that the complaint itself failed to state a claim upon which relief could be granted. Manifestly, he elected the third ground and passed over the first two. Therefore, the facial adequacy of the complaint was the sole issue he ruled on, and in that light his opinion must be read.
The complaint alleged that the Act cited in the opinion, 33 U.S.C. § 1251 and ff., required the defendant to publish a full list of toxic pollutants by January 16, 1973, that he failed to do so, and only after court order published a list of nine pollutants only, stating therewith in a published notice that pollutants were chosen for the “initial list” on the basis of four criteria, which may be capsuled (1) that the pollutant was a serious environmental threat, (2) that it could be discharged from “point sources”, (3) that data was available to establish effluent standards, and (4) abatement actions under other provisions of the Act would not be commensurate with the nature and seriousness of the problem. The complaint says these criteria are unauthorized and unlawful.
Plaintiffs equated exclusion of a substance from the list of nine with a decision not to regulate it, effective in perpetuity. Yet it was not denied that the Act provided for amending and supplementing the list after initial publication, *293nor that defendant had numerous other toxic substances under serious study. The omission of a toxic substance from the initial list was in no sense intended as a final decision to take no action with respect to that substance. The position of the complainants manifestly was that defendant had no authority to pick and choose among toxic substances and list some of them according to a self-devised system of priorities. He had to publish all of them, no matter how much or little he knew about them nor how serious a peril they appeared to present, even though the statute required the publication to lead in a specified brief time to regulatory measures. Apparently, the defendant had to regulate, and whether the regulation was well or ill considered was no concern of the statute.
The opinion below dismissing the complaint, rejects this interpretation of the law and says that the law gives the Administrator discretion to select a short list of toxic substances for speedy action while continuing study of the others. In the circumstances, with rejection of no substance yet final, consideration by the court of what substances should be listed, other than the nine would be “to interject itself into an on-going and orderly administrative process * * * ” In this view of the case, the materials relating to individual toxic pollutants other than the nine, that defendant introduced voluminously into the record in support of its motion for summary judgment, were irrelevant to the motion to dismiss. Allowance of the latter motion pre-empted the summary judgment question. The court could not properly have considered these materials and did not do so. In effect, the court holds the suit to have been prematurely brought, and manifestly the decision, if affirmed, would not have been res judicata against a suit brought to obtain review of any final decisions to exclude, at a proper time, nor would appellants be left reme-diless in cases of unreasonable delay in deciding.
Unlike the majority, I believe, I do not read the statement in the decision below, that “there has been no showing that he [the defendant] has abused that discretion [i. e., to establish priorities] or that he has exercised it except in a lawful and logical manner” as denoting that the court has reviewed the segments of the administrative record proffered by defendant, and found them free from error. I think it relates to the published decision of the defendant to resort to priorities in listing and the facial reasonableness of the priorities criteria that he published. Should the court below have examined the case at all as to any specific toxic substance, then unlisted, it would have contradicted its own statement that to do so would be to “engage in premature speculation as to the Agency’s possible failure to carry out that continuing duty at some yet unforeseeable future time.”
In short, the court below held that the complaint on its face failed to state a cause of action, that court was right in so holding, and it should be affirmed. Plaintiffs should have the judicial review we hold them entitled to in a new action brought at the proper time.
As a practical matter perhaps it does not make so much difference. Our af-firmance would no doubt have been followed by a new suit, where as things are we shall have a new complaint in the same suit. Much water, polluted or not, has passed over the dam since the lower court spoke, no doubt, and there will have to be more litigation to resolve a wholly altered situation. As indicated, the decision below, if affirmed, would not have been res judicata against a new suit brought at the proper time. New suit or old one rejuvenated, make little practical difference, perhaps. It is just that I cannot in good conscience join in reversing a decision in which I see no error.
A party who moves to dismiss or, in the alternative, for summary judgment, necessarily submits documents in support of the latter alternative. If the court elects the former, in effect it elects to ignore the documents. The confusion arising in the instant case would suggest *294the wisdom of the court’s expressly stating the documents were not considered, when this was the fact. And of course a decision should say so in flat words when it holds that a complaint is insufficient on its face. Manifestly these guides to interpretation of the decision below are needed by the appellate court and the trial court should supply them. Their omission here was particularly damaging because defendant’s brief reads as if the motion for summary judgment was the one acted on. However, the court below is entitled to have its intent determined in light of a careful reading of its actual opinion, not the exegesis of it by any party.