Burgess v. M/V Tamano

• Decision Date: 26 February 1974
• Docket Number: 13-114,Civ. No. 13-111,13-115 and 13-120.
• Citation: 382 F. Supp. 351
• Parties: Ernest E. BURGESS et al., Plaintiffs, v. M/V TAMANO et al., Defendants and Third-Party Plaintiffs, v. STATE OF MAINE et al., Third-Party Defendants. STATE OF MAINE et al., Plaintiffs, v. M/V TAMANO et al., Defendants. Mark SNOW et al., Plaintiffs, v. M/V TAMANO et al., Defendants and Third-Party Plaintiffs, v. STATE OF MAINE et al., Third-Party Defendants. Calvin E. DOUGHTY, Jr., et al., Plaintiffs, v. M/V TAMANO et al., Defendants and Third-Party Plaintiffs, v. STATE OF MAINE et al., Third-Party Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — District of Maine

382 F. Supp. 351

Ernest E. BURGESS et al., Plaintiffs, v. M/V TAMANO et al., Defendants and Third-Party Plaintiffs, v. STATE OF MAINE et al., Third-Party Defendants.

STATE OF MAINE et al., Plaintiffs, v. M/V TAMANO et al., Defendants.

Mark SNOW et al., Plaintiffs, v. M/V TAMANO et al., Defendants and Third-Party Plaintiffs, v. STATE OF MAINE et al., Third-Party Defendants.

Calvin E. DOUGHTY, Jr., et al., Plaintiffs, v. M/V TAMANO et al., Defendants and Third-Party Plaintiffs, v. STATE OF MAINE et al., Third-Party Defendants.

Civ. Nos. 13-111, 13-114, 13-115 and 13-120.

United States District Court, D. Maine, S. D.

February 26, 1974.

Theodore H. Kurtz, John A. Graustein, Portland, Me., for Ernest E. Burgess, John S. Norton and Alberto L. DiMillo, and others.

Norman S. Reef, Portland, Me., Morris D. Katz, Boston, Mass., for Marshall Madsen.

Warren E. Winslow, Portland, Me., for Warren I. and Barbara S. Paul.

Thomas R. McNaboe, Benjamin Thompson, James P. Lansing, Portland, Me., for M/V Tamano and Messrs. Wilhelmson.

Ralph I. Lancaster, Jr., Portland, Me., for Texaco, Inc.

Allen vanEmmerik, Emmet B. Lewis, Admiralty & Shipping Section, Dept. of Justice, Washington, D.C., Peter Mills, U.S. Atty., Portland, Me., for the United States.

Jon A. Lund, Atty. Gen., Martin L. Wilk, Asst. Atty. Gen., Augusta, Me., for State of Maine.

Charles W. Smith, Saco, Me., James R. Flaker, Portland, Me., for Mark Snow, Frederick Ahearn and Wild Acres Tent and Trailer Park, Inc., and others.

John A. Mitchell, Portland, Me., Joseph C. Smith, John F. O'Connell, New York City, for Charles C. Dunbar, Jr. and Portland Pilots, Inc.

Michael B. Latti, Robert S. Wolfe, Boston, Mass., Frederick T. McGonagle, Gorham, for Calvin E. Doughty, Jr. and Anthony L. Gibbons.

OPINION AND ORDER OF THE COURT

GIGNOUX, District Judge.

These four consolidated actions arise out of the discharge into the waters of Casco Bay of approximately 100,000 gallons of Bunker C oil from the tanker M/V TAMANO when, while passing through Hussey Sound en route to the port of Portland early on the morning of July 22, 1972, she struck an outcropping of "Soldier Ledge." Among those named as defendants in all actions are the TAMANO, her owners and her captain (hereinafter jointly referred to as "TAMANO"). In Civil No. 13-114, the State of Maine and its Board of Environmental Protection (hereinafter jointly referred to as "the State") seek to recover damages claimed to have been sustained by the State as a result of the spill.¹ Civil Nos. 13-111, 13-115 and 13-120 are class actions brought on behalf of owners of shore property, boat owners, commercial fishermen and commercial clam diggers alleged to have been damaged by the spill.² All actions assert liability on theories of negligence, unseaworthiness, trespass and nuisance, as well as under Section 13 of the Rivers and Harbors Act of 1899, 33 U.S.C. § 407, and Section 11(b)(2) of the Water Quality Improvement Act of 1970, 33 U. S.C. § 1161(b)(2). They invoke the admiralty and maritime jurisdiction of the federal courts pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1333(1) and 46 U.S.C. § 740.

By counterclaim in Civil No. 13-114 and by third-party complaints in Civil Nos. 13-111, 13-115 and 13-120, TAMANO seeks to recover additional cleanup costs and other damages claimed to have been incurred by TAMANO as a result of the alleged failure of the State and its agencies to perform certain duties allegedly owed by the State to TAMANO in connection with the cleanup of the spill. The claims TAMANO asserts against the State, which are set forth in identical counts in the counterclaim and third-party complaints, are: (1) in Count I, the alleged failure of the State to comply with and implement its Oil Contingency Plan published pursuant to the Maine Oil Discharge Prevention and Pollution Control Act, supra n.1; (2) in Count II, the alleged failure of the State to provide adequate sites for the disposal of debris accumulated in cleaning up the spill; (3) in Count III, the alleged refusal of the State to approve sites found by TAMANO for the disposal of debris from the cleanup; and (4) in Count IV, the alleged refusal of the State to reopen clam flats claimed by TAMANO not to have been affected by the spill. In addition, a fifth count, which appears only in the third-party complaints, seeks to hold the State directly liable to the class action plaintiffs by reason of the derelictions previously alleged.

Presently before the Court are the State's motions to dismiss the counterclaim and third-party claims against it on the grounds that the Eleventh Amendment to the Constitution bars these claims, and, alternatively, that they fail to state a claim upon which relief can be granted. For the reasons to be stated, the Court holds that the claims against the State are barred by the Eleventh Amendment and that, in any event, they fail to state any claim upon which relief can be granted.

I. Eleventh Amendment Inmunity

It is settled that the Eleventh Amendment bars suits brought by individuals in the federal courts against an unconsenting State.³ TAMANO apparently concedes this, but contends that the State of Maine has waived its immunity, and thereby has consented to the jurisdiction of this Court of the claims here asserted.

TAMANO advances two theories of waiver. First, relying on principles enunciated in Parden v. Terminal R. Co., supra n.3, and Petty v. Tennessee-Missouri Bridge Commission, 359 U.S. 275, 79 S.Ct. 785, 3 L.Ed.2d 804 (1959), TAMANO argues that the State, by enacting the Maine Oil Discharge Prevention and Control Act and by promulgating the State Oil Contigency Plan pursuant to the Act, has entered a sphere of federal regulation, established as such by virtue of the Water Quality Improvement Act of 1970, and, therefore, that the State has consented to the jurisdiction of the federal court over the present claims.

In Parden, a suit was brought against a state-owned railroad to recover damages under the Federal Employers' Liability Act. That statute specifically created a federal cause of action against "every" interstate rail carrier in favor of its injured employees. The Supreme Court held that Congress intended to include state-owned railroads within the coverage of the Act, and that Alabama by entering into interstate commerce as a rail carrier waived its immunity from suit and "necessarily consented to such suit as was authorized by that Act." 377 U.S. at 192,⁴ 84 S.Ct. at 1213.

Petty was an action under the Jones Act to recover for the death of a seaman on a Mississippi River ferry boat owned by the defendant, an interstate agency created pursuant to an interstate compact entered into with the consent of Congress pursuant to the Compact Clause of the Constitution. The Supreme Court held that by the terms of the compact, which specifically authorized the agency "to sue and be sued," and of the proviso that Congress had attached in approving it, which expressly reserved federal court jurisdiction in suits against the agency, the compact States had waived their Eleventh Amendment immunity. The Court's holding was based on the principle that the States by entering a federally regulated area "assume the conditions that Congress under the Constitution attached." 359 U.S. at 281-282, 79 S.Ct. at 790.

Both Parden and Petty establish that "when a State leaves the sphere that is exclusively its own and enters into activities subject to congressional regulation, it subjects itself to that regulation as fully as if it were a private person or corporation." 377 U.S. at 196, 84 S.Ct. at 1215 In Parden, however, and within the last year in Employees of Department of Public Health and Welfare of Missouri v. Department of Public Health and Welfare of Missouri, supra n.3, in which the Supreme Court held that the Eleventh Amendment barred a suit by state hospital employees for overtime compensation under the Fair Labor Standards Act, the Court made clear that the mere entry into a field of congressional regulation alone will not constitute a waiver of immunity, subjecting the State to federal suits by private individuals. 377 U.S. at 186, 84 S.Ct. 1207; 411 U.S. at 280-281 n.1, 285, 93 S.Ct. 1614. "Congress must express an intent to override the State's immunity." Red Star Towing and Transportation Co. v. Department of Transportation of State of New Jersey, 423 F.2d 104, 106 (3rd Cir. 1970); Daye v. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, 483 F.2d 294, 298 (3rd Cir. 1973). In Parden, the Supreme Court found such an intent in the creation by Congress in the Federal Employers' Liability Act of a cause of action against "every" interstate rail carrier, which the Court concluded embraced state-owned as well as privately-owned railroads. 377 U.S. at 187-190, 84 S.Ct. 1207. In Employees, the Court could find in the Fair Labor Standards Act no "clear language" indicating a congressional purpose to deprive a State of its constitutional immunity from federal suits under that Act. 411 U.S. at 285, 93 S.Ct. 1614.

In the present case, a careful examination of the various provisions of the Water Quality Improvement Act discloses not a word to indicate any intent by Congress to permit individuals to sue a State in the federal courts for activities in the cleanup of oil spills. Unlike the Federal Employers' Liability Act, the Water Quality Improvement Act creates no private rights of action; only the United States is authorized to sue to enforce the Act's essentially penal sanctions. See, e. g., 33 U.S.C. § 1160(f)(4) and (k) (3) (prosecutions to recover forfeitures); § 1160(g) (suits to abate pollution); § 1161(b) (4) (prosecutions for failure to report illegal discharges). Furthermore, to infer that in enacting the Water Quality Improvement Act Congress deprived the States of their constitutional immunity from private suits arising from cleanup activities would frustrate the Act's repeatedly articulated objective of encouraging State participation and...