State v. Irving Oil Corp.

• Decision Date: 11 April 2008
• Docket Number: No. 06-375.,06-375.
• Citation: 2008 VT 42,955 A.2d 1098
• Parties: STATE of Vermont v. IRVING OIL CORPORATION.
• Court: Vermont Supreme Court

955 A.2d 1098

2008 VT 42

STATE of Vermont v. IRVING OIL CORPORATION.

No. 06-375.

Supreme Court of Vermont.

April 11, 2008.

William H. Sorrell, Attorney General, William E. Griffin, Chief Assistant Attorney General, and Mark J. Di Stefano, Assistant Attorney General, Montpelier, for Plaintiff-Appellant.

James W. Spink and Jon T. Alexander of Spink & Miller, PLC, Burlington, for Defendant-Appellee.

Present: REIBER, C.J., and DOOLEY, JOHNSON, SKOGLUND and BURGESS, JJ.

REIBER, C.J.

¶ 1. The question presented is whether a State environmental-enforcement action seeking declaratory and injunctive relief, recovery of response costs, and civil penalties triggers the right to a jury trial under Chapter I, Article 12 of the Vermont Constitution. We hold that the relief sought by the State in this case is essentially equitable in nature and, therefore, that the right to trial by jury does not attach. The trial court's conclusion to the contrary is reversed.

¶ 2. The facts and procedural history may be summarized as follows. In December 2003, the State of Vermont— through the Agency of Natural Resources (ANR)—filed a complaint in superior court against defendant Irving Oil Company. The complaint alleged that, on or about July 24, 1997, a delivery truck owned and operated by defendant overturned on the Quechee Road in Hartland, Vermont, releasing gasoline into the surrounding area. When defendant later refused to assume responsibility for the investigation and remediation of the resulting contamination, the State was compelled to do so, incurring substantial costs. The State's complaint alleged that defendant was strictly liable under a provision of the Waste Management Act, 10 V.S.A. § 6615(a), for abatement of the release and the costs of remediation, and sought the following relief: (1) a declaratory judgment stating that defendant was strictly liable for abatement of the gasoline contamination at the site; (2) an injunction ordering defendant to assume responsibility for the ongoing investigation and cleanup of the site; (3) an order requiring defendant to reimburse the State for expenses that the State had been compelled to incur in investigating and remediating the site; and (4) civil penalties for violation of the prohibition against the release of hazardous materials. Id. §§ 6615(a)(4), 8221(b).¹

¶ 3. Defendant's answer to the complaint included a demand for jury trial. The State, in response, moved to strike the demand, asserting that its claims were equitable in nature and therefore not subject to trial by jury. In June 2006, the trial court issued a written decision denying the State's motion in most, but not all, respects. The parties had agreed that the claims for declaratory and injunctive relief were equitable in nature and not subject to jury trial, and the court so ruled. As to the State's request for reimbursement of investigation and cleanup costs, however, the court concluded that such a demand for monetary relief was a "classic claim for damages" at law and therefore triggered the right to a jury under Chapter I, Article 12 of the Vermont Constitution.² In addition, the court concluded that the State's claim for civil penalties was analogous to a common-law action in debt traditionally tried in courts of law, and therefore also subject to trial by jury, although the amount of any penalties imposed would be determined by a judge, not a jury.³

¶ 4. The State moved for permission to take an interlocutory appeal of the ruling. Although the trial court denied the request, we granted the State's renewed motion to address the important legal and constitutional issues raised. For the reasons set forth below, we reverse the decision of the trial court.

I.

¶ 5. Although the right to a civil jury trial enjoys federal constitutional protection under the Seventh Amendment,⁴ that provision has not been applied to the states. See Curtis v. Loether, 415 U.S. 189, 192 n. 6, 94 S.Ct. 1005, 39 L.Ed.2d 260 (1974) (observing that "[t]he Court has not held that the right to jury trial in civil cases is an element of due process applicable to state courts through the Fourteenth Amendment"). In addressing claims of this nature, therefore, we have historically looked to our own Constitution which, like almost every other state constitution, guarantees the right to jury trial "to the extent that it existed at common law at the time of the adoption of the [C]onstitution." Hodgdon v. Mt. Mansfield Co., 160 Vt. 150, 155, 624 A.2d 1122, 1125 (1992); see generally M. Moses, What the Jury Must Hear: The Supreme Court's Evolving Seventh Amendment Jurisprudence, 68 Geo. Wash. L.Rev. 183, 185, 185 nn. 10-11 (2000) (noting that the civil jury right is constitutionally based in all states but two, where it is provided by statute, and that "[f]or the most part, the ... analysis of whether a particular case is entitled to a jury trial is similar under state or federal law"). Claims traditionally tried in a "court of law" to which the constitutional right attaches are to be distinguished, however, from those that are "equitable" in nature, which were traditionally tried solely before a judge and therefore fall outside the scope of the right. See In re Estate of Gorton, 167 Vt. 357, 365, 706 A.2d 947, 952 (1997) ("[E]ntitlement to a jury trial `is dependent upon the relief requested; if the relief requested is equitable, no right to jury trial exists.'" (quoting In re Estate of Archambault, 147 Vt. 649, 649, 520 A.2d 154, 154 (1986) (mem.))).

¶ 6. As early as Plimpton v. Town of Somerset, 33 Vt. 283, 291-92 (1860), moreover, we held that the right to a civil jury trial under Article 12 is not restricted to those common-law causes of action that existed in 1793. On the contrary, where— as here—a claim is asserted under a statutory scheme that is otherwise silent on the right to a jury trial, the court must examine the nature of the action and its "fitness to be tried by a jury." Id. at 292. As the Court in Plimpton explained:

The [C]onstitution was intended to provide for the future as well as the past .... Hence it is not the time when the violated right first had its existence, nor whether the statute which gives rise to it was adopted before or after the [C]onstitution that we are to regard as the criterion of the extent of this provision of the [C]onstitution; but it is the nature of the controversy between the parties, and its fitness to be tried by a jury according to the rules of the common law that must decide the question.

Id. at 291-92 (emphasis in original).

¶ 7. More recently, in Hodgdon, 160 Vt. at 155, 624 A.2d at 1125, we recognized that the United States Supreme Court has applied a "similar test," under the Seventh Amendment, to determine whether the right to a jury trial attaches to statutory claims. First, the court must identify the closest eighteenth-century analogue to the statutory cause of action and ascertain whether it was traditionally tried to a jury or a court. Chauffeurs, Teamsters & Helpers Local No. 391 v. Terry, 494 U.S. 558, 565, 110 S.Ct. 1339, 108 L.Ed.2d 519 (1990); Tull v. United States, 481 U.S. 412, 417-18, 107 S.Ct. 1831, 95 L.Ed.2d 365 (1987); Curtis, 415 U.S. at 195-96, 94 S.Ct. 1005. Second, the court must "examine the remedy sought and determine whether it is legal or equitable in nature." Tull, 481 U.S. at 417-18, 107 S.Ct. 1831. Of the two tests, however, the Court has emphasized that "[t]he second inquiry is the more important in [the] analysis." Terry, 494 U.S. at 565, 110 S.Ct. 1339; accord Tull, 481 U.S. at 421, 107 S.Ct. 1831 ("We reiterate our previously expressed view that characterizing the relief sought is `[m]ore important' than finding a precisely analogous common-law cause of action ...." (quoting Curtis, 415 U.S. at 196, 94 S.Ct. 1005)). Indeed, some members of the high court have called for dispensing altogether with the "abstruse" search for what often prove to be elusive and imprecise historical analogues in favor of an exclusive focus on the nature of the relief sought. Ross v. Bernhard, 396 U.S. 531, 538 n. 10, 90 S.Ct. 733, 24 L.Ed.2d 729 (1970); see, e.g., Terry, 494 U.S. at 578, 110 S.Ct. 1339 (Brennan, J., concurring) (rejecting the historical inquiry as "impracticable and unilluminating" and urging that Seventh Amendment questions be decided based "on the nature of the relief sought"); Great-West Life & Annuity Ins. Co. v. Knudson, 534 U.S. 204, 224-25, 122 S.Ct. 708, 151 L.Ed.2d 635 (2002) (Ginsburg, J., dissenting) (deriding Court's reliance on "ancient classification[s]" and "anachronistic rules" in resolving the right to jury trial under the Seventh Amendment); T. Thomas, Justice Scalia Reinvents Restitution, 36 Loy. L.A. L.Rev. 1063, 1064, 1067 (2003) (noting the difficulties of distinguishing between "equitable and legal restitution" and of relying on "historical distinctions [that] have long been forgotten").

¶8. Characterizing the "remedy sought" as either legal or equitable is not without its own difficulties, however, and has often led to disagreements on the Supreme Court. See generally, e.g., Terry, 494 U.S. 558, 110 S.Ct. 1339, 108 L.Ed.2d 519 (deciding whether employees' action seeking remedy of backpay for union's alleged breach of duty of fair representation was legal or equitable for purposes of Seventh Amendment resulted in sharply fractured Court). The high court has generally agreed, however, that while an action for money damages is "the traditional form of relief offered in the courts of law," not every "award of monetary relief must necessarily be `legal' relief." Curtis, 415 U.S. at 196, 94 S.Ct. 1005 (emphasis added). Indeed, the Supreme Court has identified two broad exceptions to the general rule. The first exception applies where damages "are restitutionary, such as in actions for disgorgement of improper profits." Terry, 494 U.S. at 570, 110 S.Ct. 1339 (quotation omitted). "Second, a monetary award incidental to or...