Healey v. Bendick, Civ. A. No. 85-0341-S.
| Decision Date | 12 February 1986 |
| Docket Number | Civ. A. No. 85-0341-S. |
| Citation | 628 F. Supp. 681 |
| Parties | Charles HEALEY, Sr., d/b/a Healey's Shellfish, Plaintiff, v. Robert L. BENDICK, Jr., individually and in his capacity as the Director of the Department of Environmental Management, and as Chairperson of the Marine Fisheries Council, Joseph Dawson, Jr., Francis B. Manchester, George Mendosa, Louis Othote, Michael Parascandolo, Dr. Saul Saila, Robert Randall, Robert Smith, individually and as members of the Marine Fisheries Council, and Arlene Violet as Attorney General for the State of Rhode Island, Defendants. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — District of Rhode Island |
COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED
Revens & DeLuca, Ltd., Amato A. DeLuca, Sandra A. Blanding, Providence, R.I., for plaintiff.
Charles C. McKinley, Chief Legal Counsel, R.I. Dept. of Environmental Management, Providence, R.I., for defendants Bendick and Dept. of Environmental Management.
Arlene Violet, Atty. Gen. of R.I., Timothy F. Mullaney, Linda E. Buffardi, Steven Mignano, Sp. Asst. Attys. Gen., Providence, R.I., for defendant Violet, MFC, and Members of MFC.
This is a civil action for declaratory and mandatory injunctive relief and for compensatory damages. At bottom, the case presents a direct and robust challenge to the ligitimacy of important elements of Rhode Island's statutory and administrative mechanism for the management and conservation of certain marine resources.
Suit was brought in this court on June 7, 1985 by Charles Healey, Sr. (Healey), as plaintiff, purportedly to redress perceived deprivations of property rights protected by the Due Process Clause of the fifth and fourteenth amendments to the United States Constitution and Article IV, Sections 1 and 2 of the Rhode Island Constitution; to redress alleged impermissible interference with interstate commerce in contravention of the Commerce Clause, Art. 1, § 8, of the United States Constitution; to remedy a supposed unreasonable restraint of trade in violation of both the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, 15 U.S.C. § 1 et seq., and its state law counterpart, R.I.Gen.Laws § 6-36-1 et seq.; and to assuage the effects of sundry actions allegedly undertaken in breach of state law. The defendants are the director of Rhode Island's department of environmental management (DEM), a division of the executive branch of state government; the state's Marine Fisheries Council (MFC), a governmental entity created by the state legislature, and the individual members of the MFC (including the director of the DEM who, by state law, see R.I.Gen.Laws. § 20-3-1, serves ex officio as MFC's chairman); and the state's attorney general. The members of the MFC have been sued both individually and in their respective official capacities, as has Robert L. Bendick, Jr., the DEM director (Director). The identities of each and all of the members of the MFC are enumerated precisely in the case caption, ante, and it would be pleonastic to list them afresh.
Although pendent state law claims are also asserted, jurisdiction in this court is premised on a federal question theorem. See 28 U.S.C. § 1331.
The court presents the facts well pleaded in the complaint in the manner most hospitable to the plaintiff. It appears that Healey, a citizen and resident of Rhode Island, was and is a sole proprietor doing business in Warwick, Rhode Island under the name and style "Healey's Shellfish." As Healey's trade name implies, his business is the sale of shellfish.1 He purchases product from commercial fishermen who are licensed by the state to take shellfish, and sells at wholesale to buyers located in a variety of places throughout the northeast and the midwest. He also markets shellfish at retail from his Warwick headquarters.
Healey contends that the DEM, on August 5, 1984, acting under the authority of the Director, opened the upper Narragansett Bay (Bay) for shellfishing for the first time since December of 1981. (The Bay is the main intercoastal body of water in Rhode Island and is one of the state's primary natural resources.) Healey asserts that, in giving clearance for the extraction of shellfish, the DEM in effect declared that this area of the Bay was no longer polluted, that its condition was satisfactory to permit shellfishing, and that sound conservation policies did not require further abstinence. But, in the plaintiff's view, contamination of a more insidious kind soon infiltrated the troubled waters of the Bay.
At this point, as Healey sees it, the DEM and the MFC became the villains of the piece. Rather than allowing this suddenly pristine portion of the Bay to be shellfished continuously from midsummer of 1984 forward, these defendants placed a series of limitations on access to the Bay and on the hours of fishing. According to the plaintiff, simultaneous with the opening, the DEM and the MFC ordained that it would be accessible for shellfishing only on Tuesday of each week and limited the catch of licensed fishermen to twelve bushels of shellfish apiece. Healey ascribes to the state agencies motives considerably less pure than his assessment of the water quality of the Bay: he attributes these restrictions to an unwholesome (and illegal) desire on the part of these defendants artificially to support the price of shellfish in the local area. And, in the plaintiff's view, these molluscous manipulations were prolonged.
He alleges that on November 1, 1984, the DEM and the MFC collogued once more completely to close the upper portion of Narragansett Bay to shellfishing. When the same part of the Bay was reopened on April 9, 1985, the DEM and the MFC decreed that this would be only on a limited basis during an initial "trial period" of twenty days in duration. Specifically, the plaintiff alleges that for the first twenty "working days," i.e., the first twenty days from and after April 9 that the grounds were open to shellfishing, such activities were allowed only from 6:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m.
Healey claims, in a broadly conclusory fashion, that the MFC and the Rhode Island Shellfishermen's Association (a private trade association)2 conspired hand-in-hand to establish barriers to access to the shellfish beds and that the hours of operation and the intermittent closings were jockeyed to ease the impact of additional shellfish on the market price. He laments the effect of these machinations on the viability of his business, and seeks to put an end to the shell game which he apparently believes has been contrived and practiced by the DEM and the MFC.
It is nowhere alleged that the MFC, in conjunction with the DEM, lacked the authority to undertake the specific actions complained of, viz. opening and closing the Bay and/or imposing limitations on access. Indeed, the defendants' authority to do so under state law can scarcely be questioned. See text post at Part II. Rather, the gravamen of the plaintiff's jeremiad is that the defendants, jointly and severally, undertook these actions for improper and unlawful reasons.
In order to place this litigation into sharp focus, it is necessary to detail the particulars of Rhode Island's regulatory scheme.
MFC is a creature of the state legislature. See R.I.Gen.Laws § 20-3-1. The enabling statute was enacted in 1981. The membership of MFC is composed of the Director (who serves ex officio as chairman, see id.) or his designee, together with an octet of "private citizen members." Id. These persons must be appointed by the governor (with the advice and consent of the state senate) from "among those Rhode Islanders with skill, knowledge and experience in the commercial fishing industry, the sport fishing industry and in the conservation and management of fisheries resources." Id.3
The sweep of the MFC's authority is wide:
R.I.Gen.Laws § 20-3-2.
State law makes it explicit that the MFC, "on the advice of and in cooperation with" the Director, can designate "shellfish or marine life project management areas." R.I.Gen.Laws § 20-3-4. Any such designation shall be "for the purpose of enhancing the cultivation and growth of marine species, managing the harvest of marine species, facilitating the conduct by the department DEM of experiments in planting, cultivating, propagating, managing and developing any and all kinds of marine life, and any other related purpose." Id. Upon identifying such a "management area," the MFC is directed to:
In an emergency situation—and the definition of what constitutes an "emergency" has been left by the Rhode Island General Assembly to the sound discretion of the Council—the MFC's powers are expanded even further:
The Marine Fisheries Council may, without requirement of notice or hearing, close any or all of the coastal waters of the state to the taking of any or all types of fish, lobsters and...
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