Court Opinion

ID: 9634043
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 12:18:08.87948+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:28:21.297676
License: Public Domain

MARTHA CRAIG DAUGHTREY, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
There is no gainsaying the point emphasized by the majority that CAFA was intended to prevent local courts from “keeping [class action] cases of national importance out of Federal court.” Class Action Fairness Act (CAFA) of 2005 § 2(a)(1), 28 U.S.C. § 1711 note. The aspect of this case that the majority overlooks, however, is the fact that this class action is not a “case of national importance” but is, instead, a matter of local concern. The named plaintiff, Beth Freeman, represents a class composed entirely of property owners in Cocke County, Tennessee. The property in question abuts the Pigeon River along its 25.5-mile course in Tennessee, from the point where it crosses into the state near Waterville, North Carolina, to the point where it flows into the French Broad River just northwest of Newport, Tennessee, the county seat of Cocke County. Indeed, the Tennessee portion of the river is located entirely within Cocke County. Only the fact that the defendant, Blue Ridge Paper Products, operates a paper mill that is located in nearby Canton, North Carolina, and is incorporated in Delaware gives this *411case an interstate connection sufficient to subject it to possible diversity jurisdiction in federal court.
The Blue Ridge paper mill, formerly operated by Champion International Paper Corporation and now a subsidiary of Evergreen Packaging Group, is located upstream from the Cocke County, stretch of the Pigeon River. Blue Ridge uses the water from the river in its paper-making process, then discharges it back into the river on a continuous basis and thereby introduces certain chemicals and other contaminants into the water. Equally as continuous over the past two decades have been the legal efforts to force the defendant to abate the pollution, as reflected in repeated litigation against Champion and now Blue Ridge. In the current complaint, Freeman alleges that the defendant’s pollution of the Pigeon River has had various deleterious effects upon those individuals who own real property that adjoins the river as it flows into Tennessee, including limitations on the enjoyment of their property, impaired water quality, personal discomfort, loss of recreational use of the river, annoyance, and loss of rental value of their property.
Because, at least theoretically, a new cause of action arises each time pollutants are discharged into the river, I conclude that the multiple actions filed in state court with firm limits on the amount of damages in controversy should not have been subject to removal under CAFA and, as a result, that the district court’s order remanding them to state court should be affirmed. Moreover, given the multiplicity of events giving rise to potential liability, the majority’s comparison between this case and that of conspiracy simply does not hold up as a valid analogy. A conspiracy has a beginning point, arising from an agreement between or among the co-conspirators, it is established by the occasion of one or more overt acts, and it continues until all but the last member of the conspiracy have withdrawn or otherwise have brought the conspiracy to a close. It may, of course, be possible to establish the existence of multiple, discrete conspiracies, but in the absence of such proof, there is no basis for segmenting the conspiracy into separate actions of some kind, as the majority seems to suggest.
The majority is willing to recognize that “[i]n determining the amount in controversy, the plaintiff is the ‘master of his complaint.’ ” Smith v. Nationwide Prop. and Cas. Ins. Co., 505 F.3d 401, 407 (6th Cir. 2007). If there were a single complaint in this case, alleging the existence of a single, one-time nuisance, the majority would apparently condone an action structured so that it avoided CAFA (“We do not rely, however, on plaintiffs’ argument that the jurisdictional amount is exceeded in each one of the separate cases by virtue of the number of class members (300) and the amount that each class member claimed ($74,000) ... because each of the five complaints caps individual damages at $74,000 and overall damages at $4.9 million. Presumably that overall limit for each time period is binding on the plaintiffs .... ”), and would allow the plaintiffs intentionally to avoid removal to federal court. If the plaintiff files separate actions alleging multiple instances of conduct giving rise to liability, what reason would there be to charge, as the majority does here, that there is no “colorable basis” for structuring those actions so as to avoid CAFA? I would argue that there is none, and no authority to support the majority’s adoption of a “colorable basis” requirement, especially where, as here, the filing of multiple actions is legal under state law.
For this reason, I respectfully dissent.