Roberts v. Florida Power & Light Co.

• Decision Date: 22 July 1998
• Docket Number: No. 97-5195,97-5195
• Citation: 146 F.3d 1305
• Parties: 11 Fla. L. Weekly Fed. C 1614 Bertram ROBERTS, Hanni Roberts, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. FLORIDA POWER & LIGHT COMPANY, A Florida Public Utility Corporation, Defendant-Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eleventh Circuit

Page 1305

146 F.3d 1305

11 Fla. L. Weekly Fed. C 1614

Bertram ROBERTS, Hanni Roberts, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. FLORIDA POWER & LIGHT COMPANY, A Florida Public Utility

Corporation, Defendant-Appellee.

No. 97-5195.

United States Court of Appeals,

Eleventh Circuit.

July 22, 1998.

Ervin Amado Gonzalez, Raymond W. Valori, Robles & Gonzalez, P.A., Miami, FL, Brian Wolfman, David C. Vladeck, Public Citizen Litigation Group, Washington, DC, for Plaintiffs-Appellants.

Donald E. Jose, David Wiedis, Jose & Wiedis, West Chester, PA, Thomas M. Karr, Alvin B. Davis, Steel, Hector & Davis, LLP, Miami, FL, for Defendant-Appellee.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida.

Before CARNES and HULL, Circuit Judges, and HENDERSON, Senior Circuit Judge.

PER CURIAM:

Bertram and Hanni Roberts filed this tort action in the Circuit Court of Dade County, Florida against Florida Power & Light ("FPL"), alleging that Bertram Roberts developed leukemia as a result of exposure to radiation at FPL's Turkey Point Nuclear Plant. FPL removed the case to the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida and subsequently moved to dismiss for failure to state a claim. The district court granted that motion. We affirm.

I. BACKGROUND

Over the past 50 years, Congress has established a comprehensive federal framework governing the nuclear power industry, beginning with the enactment of the Atomic Energy Act in 1946. That statute granted the federal government a monopoly on the development of nuclear power. Congress subsequently determined that it was in the national interest to encourage the private sector to participate in this effort. Toward that end, the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 established the Atomic Energy Commission and gave it authority to license and regulate nuclear power plants. See 42 U.S.C. § 2011 et seq. Private power companies were reluctant to invest in nuclear facilities, however, because of concerns about their liability. To address that problem, Congress enacted the Price-Anderson Act in 1957. That statute contained three main features: it 1) established a limit on the aggregate liability of those who wished to undertake activities involving the handling of nuclear material, 2) channeled public liability resulting from nuclear incidents to the federal government and 3) provided that all public liability claims above the amount of required private insurance would be indemnified by the federal government. See Pub.L. 85-256, 71 Stat. 576 (1957).

After several further changes to the statute, Congress passed the Price-Anderson Amendments Act of 1988 ("the Amendments Act"), creating an exclusive federal cause of action for radiation injury. The statute defines a "public liability action" as any suit asserting public liability growing out of exposure to nuclear radiation, 42 U.S.C. § 2014(hh), and defines "public liability" as any legal liability arising out of or resulting from a nuclear incident ¹ or precautionary evacuation, id. at 2014(w). The Amendments Act also provided for the removal of, and original federal jurisdiction over, claims for any nuclear incident. 42 U.S.C. § 2210(n)(2). ² Congress further required that the substantive rules of decision to be applied by the courts in such cases "shall be derived from the law of the state in which the nuclear incident involved occurs, unless such law is inconsistent with the provisions of" section 2210 of the Price Anderson Act. ³ 42 U.S.C. § 2014(hh). One of the principal issues arising out of these hybrid actions is whether state tort standards of care are consistent with federal radiation exposure regulations or are inconsistent and, thereby, preempted. ⁴

II. FACTS AND PROCEEDINGS IN THIS CASE

Bertram Roberts was employed as an electrician by FPL at its Turkey Point Nuclear Plant from 1966 to 1989. He developed myelogenous leukemia in 1993 after his retirement. Roberts and his wife, Hanni Roberts, filed this action against FPL contending that his disease resulted from his exposure to radiation at the plant. The complaint asserted causes of action for negligence, strict liability and Hanni Roberts' claim for loss of consortium. Since this was a public liability action within the meaning of the Amendments Act, the district court had original jurisdiction over all the plaintiffs' allegations of liability, and FPL timely removed the action to that court.

FPL then moved to dismiss the case because the plaintiffs had failed to allege an essential element of a public liability action, to wit: for a negligence claim, exposure to radiation in excess of the permissible "dosage" levels set by federal regulation; or, for a strict liability cause of action, offsite exposure from an event declared to be an extraordinary nuclear occurrence by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Since there was no extraordinary nuclear occurrence involved in this case, the district court concluded that, to state a negligence claim under the Amendments Act, the plaintiffs must allege and prove that the defendant breached its duty of care by exposing Bertram Roberts to an amount of radiation in excess of federally defined permissible radiation dose standards. In other words, state standards of care were preempted by federal regulatory standards in cases involving exposure to radiation. Since the plaintiffs had failed to allege that Bertram Roberts had been exposed to such excessive levels of radiation, the court granted FPL's motion to dismiss. The plaintiffs filed this appeal from that order.

III. STANDARD OF REVIEW

We review the dismissal of a complaint for failure to state a claim for relief de novo, accepting all allegations in the complaint as true and construing those allegations in the light most favorable to the plaintiffs. Lopez v. First Union National Bank of Florida, 129 F.3d 1186, 1189 (11th Cir.1997). A complaint may not be dismissed for failure to state a claim unless it appears beyond doubt that the plaintiffs can prove no set of facts in support of their claim which would entitled them to relief. Id.

IV. DISCUSSION

On appeal, the plaintiffs maintain that, rather than preempting state law standards of care, the language of § 2014(hh), quoted above, actually preserves them. They assert that the section preempts state law only to the extent it is inconsistent with § 2210, which governs, inter alia, indemnification for plant operators, abrogation of certain defenses in public liability actions and limitations on aggregate liability. They argue that § 2210 does not even mention radiation exposure limits and further contend that, since the statute is so clear on this point, there is no need to inquire whether it impliedly preempts state standards of care. They also urge that, even if that inquiry were to be undertaken, there is no inconsistency between the federal standard and common-law tort standards but, rather, that the state tort standards further federal objectives in this area.

FPL, on the other hand, urges that the comprehensive federal nuclear regulatory framework completely preempts the field of nuclear safety, in keeping with the clear language of § 2014(hh), and any state law rule of decision which is inconsistent with this statutory and regulatory framework has no force or effect.

The Supreme Court has concluded that "the safety of nuclear technology [is] the exclusive business of the Federal Government...." Pacific Gas & Electric Co. v. State Energy Resources Conservation & Development Commission, 461 U.S. 190, 208, 103 S.Ct. 1713, 1724, 75 L.Ed.2d 752 (1983). This holding was reaffirmed one term later in Silkwood v. Kerr-McGee Corp., 464 U.S. 238, 104 S.Ct. 615, 78 L.Ed.2d 443 (1984). In that case, the Court held that "states are precluded from regulating the safety aspects of nuclear power." Id. at 240-41, 104 S.Ct. at 617. ⁵ The result is, as the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals has observed, "state regulation of nuclear safety, through either legislation...