Shayne Bros., Inc. v. Prince George's County, Md., Civ. No. H-82-2354.

• Decision Date: 09 February 1983
• Docket Number: Civ. No. H-82-2354.
• Citation: 556 F. Supp. 182
• Parties: SHAYNE BROS., INC. and United Disposal Corporation, Plaintiffs, v. PRINCE GEORGE'S COUNTY, MARYLAND, Defendant.
• Court: U.S. District Court — District of Maryland

556 F. Supp. 182

SHAYNE BROS., INC. and United Disposal Corporation, Plaintiffs, v. PRINCE GEORGE'S COUNTY, MARYLAND, Defendant.

Civ. No. H-82-2354.

United States District Court, D. Maryland.

February 9, 1983.

George Beall, Jefferson V. Wright and Miles & Stockbridge, Baltimore, Md., for plaintiffs.

Robert B. Ostrom, County Atty., and John T. Beamer, II, Associate County Atty., Upper Marlboro, Md., for defendant.

ALEXANDER HARVEY, II, District Judge:

In this civil action, two firms which haul trash and refuse are asking this Court to declare unconstitutional or inapplicable two ordinances of Prince George's County, Maryland. Because of the effect on their business of the County's recent efforts to enforce these ordinances, plaintiffs filed with their complaint a motion for a Temporary Restraining Order and for a preliminary injunction. Following a brief hearing, Judge Jones denied the application for a Temporary Restraining Order. Thereafter, following several conferences with the Court, it was agreed pursuant to Rule 65(a)(2), F.R.Civ.P., that the trial of this action on the merits should be advanced and consolidated with the hearing on the motion for a preliminary injunction. An Order to that effect was accordingly entered by the Court.

The case came on for trial before the Court sitting without a jury. Several witnesses testified, and a number of exhibits were admitted in evidence. In addition, the depositions of the witnesses Jones, Langello and Hanin have been made a part of the record in the case.

The facts giving rise to the dispute in this case are as follows. There are presently two landfill sites located in Prince George's County which are capable of receiving and authorized to receive solid waste. These facilities are known as the Brown Station Road Landfill and the Sandy Hill Sanitary Landfill.

The Brown Station Road facility is located approximately two miles northwest of the town of Upper Marlboro, Maryland. It was opened in March 1968 and is owned and operated by the Prince George's County Office of Urban Services, Department of Public Works and Transportation. The landfill occupies a site of approximately 850 acres, and has an estimated useful life which will extend until the year 2000, if a pending application before a State agency is approved.

The Sandy Hill facility is situated just north of Bowie, Maryland. It was acquired in 1977 and is presently owned by the Maryland National Capital Park and Planning Commission, a bi-county agency of Prince George's and Montgomery Counties. The Sandy Hill landfill is operated under a contract with Waste Management, Inc., a commercial concern. This facility occupies a site of approximately 280 acres and has an estimated useful life which extends until late 1989.

A person or entity seeking to dispose of trash or refuse in either of the abovementioned landfills is charged a tipping or user's fee. For fiscal year 1983, the fee at both facilities is $15.00 per ton for general refuse.

Shayne Bros., Inc. (hereinafter "Shayne") and United Disposal Corporation (hereinafter "United"), the two plaintiffs, are corporations engaged in the business of trash and refuse collection, transportation and disposal. Both plaintiffs are District of Columbia corporations and are wholly owned subsidiaries of SCA Services, Inc. They handle refuse generated both from within and from without Prince George's County.

Shayne presently maintains approximately thirty separate refuse collection routes within Prince George's County. The approximate geographical breakdown of the sources of Shayne's total revenue is as follows: (1) Prince George's County — 50%; (2) the District of Columbia — 35%; (3) Virginia — 14%; and (4) Anne Arundel County — 1%. Shayne has a total of thirty-three trucks for which trash collection and disposal permits have previously been issued by defendant.

United collects, transports and disposes of trash and refuse generated by commercial as well as residential customers. In Prince George's County, United has mainly functioned as a back-up service to Shayne when the latter could not service its customers on a particular day. United has contracts with customers from Montgomery and Howard Counties, and, until recently, has maintained as many as 75 to 100 contracts with customers located in Prince George's County. United presently has four trucks which have been licensed by defendant for trash collection and disposal.

Beginning in June 1982, plaintiffs received notices from the Chief of the Bureau of Urban Services, Department of Public Works and Transportation of Prince George's County, stating that certain of their trucks had violated §§ 21-122 and 21-123 of the Prince George's County Code and that therefore the licenses for these trucks to operate in the County were being revoked. These revocation decisions were subsequently affirmed in hearings before the County health officer. As of December 1, 1982, Shayne has had five licenses revoked and United one.

The Ordinances in question, which are a part of the Prince George's County Code, are as follows:

§ 21-122. Transportation of Refuse from Outside State

No trucks or other vehicles shall transport from without the State trash or refuse to a dump or landfill within this County, unless authority has been granted by the Council and County Executive. § 21-123. Use of Facilities by Neighboring Jurisdictions

Neighboring or adjacent jurisdictions and municipalities in the State shall obtain the consent of the Council before using disposal facilities in this County.

The County's efforts to enforce these Ordinances have been substantially accelerated over the past three years, partly because of an increased awareness on the part of County officials of both the political difficulty involved in obtaining additional landfill space within the County and the finite capacity of the existing landfills. Moreover, in 1981, the fees charged by Montgomery County for the use of their landfills were increased, creating an incentive for businesses in the general area to use the facilities situated in Prince George's County.

Plaintiffs filed suit in this Court on August 12, 1982, seeking declaratory and injunctive relief. Named as the sole defendant is Prince George's County, Maryland. On August 13, 1982, Judge Jones held a hearing on the motion for a Temporary Restraining Order. Although noting that plaintiffs' chances of success on the merits were good and that a strong argument could be made that § 21-123 did not by its terms apply to these plaintiffs, Judge Jones, in an oral opinion, denied the motion for a Temporary Restraining Order, concluding that plaintiffs had not met their burden of showing an entitlement to the extraordinary relief represented by a Temporary Restraining Order.

Plaintiffs contend (1) that § 21-122 is violative of the Commerce Clause of the United States Constitution, U.S. Const. Art. I, § 8, cl. 3; (2) that § 21-123 is, on its face, inapplicable to plaintiffs because it prohibits actions only of "neighboring or adjacent jurisdictions or municipalities;" (3) that § 21-123, if applicable to plaintiffs, is void for vagueness; (4) that § 21-123, if applicable to plaintiffs, places an undue burden on interstate commerce and is therefore violative of the Commerce Clause; and (5) that § 21-123, if applicable to plaintiffs, violates the equal protection guarantees of both federal and state law.

Essentially, the question presented in this case is whether plaintiffs, under existing provisions of the Prince George's County Code, may bring trash and refuse from outside the County and deposit such waste at landfills within the County. Under §§ 21-122 and 21-123, plaintiffs may legally collect trash and refuse from within the County and, pursuant to existing licenses issued to their trucks, may deposit such wastes at landfills within the County. By this suit, plaintiffs claim that they have the right to collect wastes from neighboring jurisdictions for transport into and deposit at proper locations in Prince George's County.

I

The primary constitutional question presented is whether § 21-122 violates the Commerce Clause of the Constitution. The principal case relied on by plaintiffs is City of Philadelphia v. New Jersey, 437 U.S. 617, 98 S.Ct. 2531, 57 L.Ed.2d 475 (1978). In that case, the Supreme Court found a New Jersey statute which prohibited the importation of most "solid or liquid waste which originated or was collected outside the territorial limits of the State * * *" to be violative of the Commerce Clause of the United States Constitution.

In analyzing the constitutionality of the statute, the Court, in a cogent opinion written by Justice Stewart, concluded that the interstate movement of wastes constitutes "commerce" within the meaning of the Commerce Clause and that any effort to restrict such movement is subject to constitutional scrutiny because all objects of interstate trade merit Commerce Clause protection. Id. at 622-623, 98 S.Ct. at 2535. The opinion cited H.P. Hood & Sons, Inc. v. DuMond, 336 U.S. 525, 537-538, 69 S.Ct. 657, 664-65, 93 L.Ed. 865 (1949), for the proposition that the states are not separable economic units. The DuMond case had quoted Baldwin v. Seelig, 294 U.S. 511, 527, 55 S.Ct. 497, 502, 79 L.Ed. 1032 (1935), for the principle "that one state in its dealings with another may not place itself in a position of economic isolation." After noting the alertness of the Supreme Court to the evils of "economic isolation" and protectionism, the Court analyzed the New Jersey statute and concluded that it was a protectionist measure which was violative of the Commerce Clause. Justice Stewart explained that while New Jersey could protect its economy and environment by controlling the flow of all wastes into the State's landfills, it was impermissible to discriminate against out-of-state wastes solely on the basis of place of origin. Citing previous decisions of the Supreme Court...