Heppner v. Alyeska Pipeline Service Co.

• Decision Date: 16 November 1981
• Docket Number: 79-4884,Nos. 79-4883,s. 79-4883
• Citation: 665 F.2d 868
• Parties: Lydia HEPPNER, as Personal Representative of the Estate of Henry J. Heppner, Jr., Deceased, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. ALYESKA PIPELINE SERVICE COMPANY, Amerada Hess Corporation, Arco Pipeline Company, British Petroleum Pipelines, Inc., Exxon Pipeline Company, Mobil Alaska Pipeline Company, Phillips Petroleum Company, Sohio Pipeline Company, and Union Alaska Pipeline Company, Defendants-Appellees. Rick W. JORDAN and Suzanne Jordan, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. AMERADA HESS CORPORATION, Arco Pipeline Company, British Petroleum Pipelines, Inc., Exxon Pipeline Company, Mobil Alaska Pipeline Company, Phillips Petroleum Company, Sohio Pipeline Company, and Union Alaska Pipeline Company, Defendants-Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Ninth Circuit

Page 868

665 F.2d 868

Lydia HEPPNER, as Personal Representative of the Estate of Henry J. Heppner, Jr., Deceased, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. ALYESKA PIPELINE SERVICE COMPANY, Amerada Hess Corporation,

Arco Pipeline Company, British Petroleum Pipelines, Inc.,

Exxon Pipeline Company, Mobil Alaska Pipeline Company,

Phillips Petroleum Company, Sohio Pipeline Company, and

Union Alaska Pipeline Company, Defendants-Appellees.

Rick W. JORDAN and Suzanne Jordan, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. AMERADA HESS CORPORATION, Arco Pipeline Company, British

Petroleum Pipelines, Inc., Exxon Pipeline Company, Mobil

Alaska Pipeline Company, Phillips Petroleum Company, Sohio

Pipeline Company, and Union Alaska Pipeline Company,

Defendants-Appellees.

Nos. 79-4883, 79-4884.

United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit.

Argued and Submitted July 9, 1981.

Decided Nov. 16, 1981. ^*

Roger Brunner, Fairbanks, Alaska, for plaintiffs-appellants.

Girard E. Boudreau, Jr., Los Angeles, Cal., for defendants-appellees.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Alaska.

Before WALLACE and TANG, Circuit Judges, and FRYE, ^** District Judge.

WALLACE, Circuit Judge:

In this consolidated appeal, Heppner and Jordan challenge the dismissal by the district court of their causes of action brought pursuant to the special liability provisions of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline Authorization Act (the Act), 43 U.S.C. § 1653(a)(1). The district judge concluded that the Act does not provide for personal injury actions unrelated to the special environmental risks created by the pipeline. 479 F.Supp. 573. We agree and affirm.

I

On August 10, 1976, Heppner's husband was working in a gravel pit that served as a material site for the pipeline and was within the pipeline right-of-way. He was crushed between a rock and a piece of heavy equipment, suffering injuries resulting in his death. On July 28, 1976, Jordan was a passenger in an automobile that was involved in an accident in which Jordan suffered personal injuries, and as a result of which his wife suffered a loss of consortium. Jordan alleges that the operation of the vehicle and his being a passenger in it were the result of and in connection with activities along or in the vicinity of the pipeline right-of-way.

II

The only issue on appeal is whether the language of the strict liability provision of the Act covers Heppner's and Jordan's causes of action. The Act provides in part as follows:

Except when the holder of the pipeline right-of-way granted pursuant to this chapter can prove that damages in connection with or resulting from activities along or in the vicinity of the proposed trans-Alaskan pipeline right-of-way were caused by an act of war or negligence of the United States, other government entity, or the damaged party, such holder shall be strictly liable to all damaged parties, public or private, without regard to fault for such damages, and without regard to ownership of any affected lands, structures, fish, wildlife, or biotic or other natural resources relied upon by Alaska Natives, Native organizations, or others for subsistence or economic purposes.

43 U.S.C. § 1653(a)(1).

The question is, therefore, whether ordinary personal injury and wrongful death claims, unconnected with any environmental injury, are embraced by the language "damages in connection with or resulting from activities along or in the vicinity of the proposed trans-Alaskan pipeline right-of-way ...." Jordan and Heppner contend that the language of the statute unambiguously comprehends personal injury and wrongful death actions. They argue that the "plain meaning rule" makes consideration of the legislative history of the Act unnecessary or even improper.

There is language in old cases suggesting that the plain meaning rule is, in the proper case, a bar to the consideration of the legislative history. See, e. g., United States v. Missouri Pacific Railroad, 278 U.S. 269, 278, 49 S.Ct. 133, 136, 73 L.Ed. 322 (1929); Caminetti v. United States, 242 U.S. 470, 490, 37 S.Ct. 192, 196, 61 L.Ed. 442 (1917); Pennsylvania Railroad v. International Coal Mining Co., 230 U.S. 184, 199, 33 S.Ct. 893, 896, 57 L.Ed. 1446 (1913). Our reading of more recent Supreme Court cases leads us to conclude that the plain meaning rule is no longer considered an absolute prohibition, but a flexible principle for ascertaining the intent of Congress. The Court has recently given clear expression to this understanding of the rule:

(A)scertainment of the meaning apparent on the face of the single statute need not end the inquiry.... This is because the plain meaning rule is "rather an axiom of experience than a rule of law, and does not preclude consideration of persuasive evidence if it exists." Boston Sand Co. v. United States, 278 U.S. 41, 48 (49 S.Ct. 52, 54, 73 L.Ed. 170) (1928) (Holmes, J.). ⁹ The circumstances of the enactment of particular legislation may persuade a court that Congress did not intend words of common meaning to have their literal effect.

Watt v. Alaska, --- U.S. ----, ---- - ----, 101 S.Ct. 1673, 1677-78, 68 L.Ed.2d 80 (1981). Footnote 9 reads as follows:

"Of course it is true that the words used, even in their literal sense, are the primary, and ordinarily the most reliable, source of interpreting the meaning of any writing: be it a statute, a contract, or anything else. But it is one of the surest indexes of a mature and developed jurisprudence not to make a fortress out of the dictionary; but to remember that statutes always have some purpose or object to accomplish, whose sympathetic and imaginative discovery is the surest guide to their meaning." Cabell v. Markham, 148 F.2d 737, 739 (C.A.2) (L. Hand, J.), aff'd, 326 U.S. 404 (66 S.Ct. 193, 90 L.Ed. 165) (1945).

Id. at 1677 n.9. See also Train v. Colorado Public Interest Research Group, 426 U.S. 1, 9-10, 96 S.Ct. 1938, 1942, 48 L.Ed.2d 434 (1976); Murphy, Old Maxims Never Die: The "Plain-Meaning Rule" and Statutory Interpretation in the "Modern" Federal Courts, 75 Colum.L.Rev. 1299 (1975).

Heppner and Jordan argue strenuously that TVA v. Hill, 437 U.S. 153, 98 S.Ct. 2279, 57 L.Ed.2d 117 (1978), supports their position on the role of legislative history in statutory interpretation. That case, however, contains no absolute bar to the use of legislative history. The Court in TVA v. Hill formulated a version of the plain meaning rule as follows:

When confronted with a statute which is plain and unambiguous on its face, we ordinarily do not look to legislative history as a guide to its meaning.... Here it is not necessary to look beyond the words of the statute. We have undertaken such an analysis only to meet Mr. Justice Powell's suggestion that the "absurd" result reached in this case ... is not in accord with congressional intent.

Id. at 184 n.29, 98 S.Ct. at 2296 n.29 (emphasis in original) (citation omitted).

This formulation does not foreclose a court from looking to legislative history. It does not require a court to operate under an artificially induced sense of amnesia about the purpose of legislation, or to turn a blind eye towards significant evidence of Congressional intent in the legislative history. TVA v. Hill stands for the proposition that evidence of the intent of Congress drawn from the facially clear meaning of the statute will sometimes be so strong that the court will be under no obligation to engage in an exploration of the legislative history; that is, it "is not necessary to look beyond the words of the statute." This is no talismanic invocation of an exclusively privileged status for apparently unambiguous statutory language. Rather, it is a recognition of the practical principle that evidence is sometimes so good in the first place to which one turns that it is unnecessary to look further.

Thus understood, TVA v. Hill is in no conflict with Watt v. Alaska or Train v. Colorado Public Interest Research Group. When the meaning of statutory language is unclear, one must look to the legislative history. When the statutory language is clear, and there is no reason to believe that it conflicts with the congressional purpose, then legislative history need not be delved into, unless it is brought to the court's attention that there is within the legislative history something so probative of the intent of Congress as to require a reevaluation of the meaning of the statutory language. ¹

Church of Scientology v. United States Department of Justice, 612 F.2d 417, 421 (9th Cir. 1979), and United States v. Rone, 598 F.2d 564, 569 (9th Cir. 1979), cert. denied, 445 U.S. 946, 100 S.Ct. 1345, 63 L.Ed.2d 780 (1980), were decided prior to Watt v. Alaska and should be interpreted to be consistent with Watt. Thus, they should not be read to suggest that in some civil cases the court is to apply a rigid rule that legislative history may never be considered, as such would be inconsistent with Watt v. Alaska.

Having concluded that we are not forbidden from considering legislative history, our next inquiry is whether we should do so. We first look to the face of the particular part of the statute in question. Although the language of section 1653 is facially clear and unambiguous, the plain meaning rule, as currently articulated by the Supreme Court, requires us to approach the statute, not with mechanical literalism, but with the purpose of implementing Congressional intent. Sometimes the literal application of the statute occasions an unexpected or, in the traditional language, an "absurd" result. The Supreme Court has, at times, considered absurd results of statutory language to be a reason for looking beyond the face of the subject to the legislative history. United States v. American Trucking Ass'n, 310 U.S. 534, 543, 60 S.Ct. 1059, 1063, 84 L.Ed. 1345 (1940); Church of Holy Trinity v. United States, 143 U.S. 457, 459, 12 S.Ct. 511, 512, 36 L.Ed. 226 (1892). On the other hand, the Court has sometimes determined that absurd or curious results do...