Waste Recovery Co-op. of Minnesota v. County of Hennepin
Decision Date | 27 July 1993 |
Docket Number | No. C0-93-158,C0-93-158 |
Citation | 504 N.W.2d 220 |
Parties | WASTE RECOVERY COOPERATIVE OF MINNESOTA, et al., Respondents, v. The COUNTY OF HENNEPIN, Minnesota, et al., Appellants. |
Court | Minnesota Court of Appeals |
Syllabus by the Court
1. Although an order denying a motion for summary judgment is ordinarily not appealable, the denial of a motion for summary judgment based on federal qualified immunity and nonfederal discretionary function and due care in the execution of a statute immunity is immediately appealable.
2. Qualified immunity protects a municipality and its employees from suit pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (1988) where the discretionary actions of a municipal employee did not violate clearly established federal statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known.
3. An alleged violation of the Due Process Clause of the Minnesota Constitution, Minn. Const. art. I, § 7, is not redressable in a section 1983 action.
4. Discretionary function immunity shields a municipality and its employees from tort liability under Minn.Stat. § 466.03, subd. 6 (1990) where governmental action involves a balancing of policy objectives, such as where a municipal official is called upon to interpret municipal waste statutes and ordinances and determine whether proposed fuel briquetting is recycling or energy recovery.
5. Summary judgment on the issue of due care in the execution of a statute immunity under Minn.Stat. § 466.03, subd. 5 (1990) is properly denied where the court, based upon disputed issues of material fact, cannot say as a matter of law that municipal employees were executing a statute with due care when they allegedly committed a trespass.
Timothy R. Thornton, Jack Y. Perry, Briggs and Morgan, P.A., Minneapolis, for respondents.
Michael O. Freeman, Hennepin County Atty., Deonne Parker, Asst. County Atty., Minneapolis, for appellants.
Considered and decided by DAVIES, P.J., and HUSPENI and HARTEN, JJ.
In March 1991, respondents Waste Recovery Cooperative of Minnesota, Inc. (WRC) and Poor Richard's, Inc. (PRI), a Hennepin County licensed solid waste hauler, commenced an action seeking a restraining order and damages in connection with appellant Hennepin County's investigation of the capability of WRC to recycle obsolete U.S. West telephone directories.
U.S. West intervened and moved for a declaratory judgment. The district court denied respondents' motion for a temporary restraining order, and declared that (1) the telephone directories were not "waste" as defined in Minn.Stat. § 115A.03, subd. 34 (1990); (2) Hennepin County, Minn., Ordinance No. 12 did not apply to the telephone directories; and (3) the letter directives of the Hennepin County Department of Environmental Management that required delivery of the directories to a designated county waste facility had no force or effect. The court of appeals affirmed, holding that Hennepin County had no authority over the telephone directories. Waste Recovery Coop. of Minn. v. County of Hennepin, 475 N.W.2d 892, 896 (Minn.App.1991), pet. for rev. denied (Minn. Dec. 9, 1991).
Respondents reopened the case seeking damages pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (1988) contending that the letter directives sent by appellants Hennepin County and Thomas L. Heenan denied them due process of law under the United States and Minnesota Constitutions and were a taking of property without just compensation in violation of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments of the United States Constitution. Respondents claim that the entry of appellants Dennis Weiss and John Carlson, two Hennepin County solid waste investigators, onto property where respondents stored the U.S. West directories was an unreasonable search and seizure under the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments and common law trespass. Respondents also allege appellants tortiously interfered with their contracts.
Concluding "there are substantial issues of fact," the district court denied each of the parties' motions for summary judgment. Appellants seek review of the order on the basis of qualified, discretionary function, and due care in the execution of a statute immunity. We affirm in part, reverse in part, and remand.
U.S. West Direct, a division of U.S. West Marketing Resource Group Inc. (U.S. West), published the 1990 white and yellow pages telephone directories for Minneapolis and St. Paul. After distributing the 1991 directories to its customers, U.S. West advertised that customers could "recycle" their 1990 directories by leaving them in bins at metropolitan Target Stores between January 15 and March 30, 1991.
U.S. West paid WRC $35 per ton for the collected directories. WRC, in turn, hired PRI to transport the directories from Target locations to WRC's warehouse locations in Ramsey County.
In February 1991, Hennepin County, through its Department of Environmental Management, commenced an investigation of WRC's recycling of U.S. West telephone directories. Hennepin County concluded that it had authority over the directories pursuant to the county's waste designation ordinance. Hennepin County, Minn., Ordinance No. 12 (1990). 1 Heenan, principal environmentalist with the county, sent a letter to PRI stating:
We are aware that you have contracted with [WRC] to collect and haul to 45 East Maryland, St. Paul, used phone books from locations in Hennepin County. [WRC] has indicated that they intend to burn at least a portion of the books as fuel. Burning does not meet the definition of recycling [under Minn.Stat. § 115A.03]. Due to the fact these materials are discarded, the books are classified as waste. * * *
Under Ordinance Number 12, all waste not recycled must be delivered to one of the specific facilities. * * * We are directing you to immediately cease removing phone books from Hennepin County until you confirm to our satisfaction that the phone books will in fact be recycled. * * * The phone books already moved from Hennepin County must be delivered by February 28 to a designated Hennepin County facility unless by that date you have made arrangements suitable to Hennepin County for the recycling of these materials. Failure to comply with the ordinance may subject you to legal action, and we may also bring action to suspend or revoke your license to haul refuse in Hennepin County.
(Emphasis added.) Heenan sent a similar letter to WRC and indicated that Hennepin County prohibited WRC from converting the directories into fuel and required WRC to deliver the collected directories to a Hennepin County facility by February 28, 1991, unless WRC confirmed arrangements for recycling.
WRC's initial plans included processing the directories into fuel briquettes. According to the complaint, however, WRC also engaged in processing waste paper into packaging materials and worm bedding. After Hennepin County ordered respondents to cease removing directories from the county until it confirmed WRC was recycling the directories, Hennepin County agreed to permit respondents to haul and process the directories, so long as processing was restricted to production of packaging materials and worm bedding. WRC alleges that by conceding to so restrict processing they made a "substantial concession." However, WRC did not own or lease the equipment necessary to manufacture fuel briquettes. Its five year plan, including the purchase cost of such equipment, required financing of approximately $15 million. While WRC alleged in its complaint that appellants interfered with contracts between WRC and "sources of interim funding for the purchase of manufacture and processing equipment," and asserted that but for the litigation it could have procured financing, efforts to do so previous to the letter directives were fruitless. 2
According to WRC, a contract existed between it and U.S. West to collect and process the obsolete telephone directories, under the terms of which U.S. West would pay WRC "processing fees" of $35 per ton and WRC would pay PRI for hauling. After conclusion of the declaratory judgment litigation, WRC wrote to U.S. West on February 19, 1992, that "the original contract between U.S. West and WRC does not cover a time frame in which WRC was to have the directories processed."
Respondents also claim that appellants interfered with an alleged hauling agreement between WRC and PRI that provided for payment by WRC to PRI of "normal [hauling] rates." However, PRI's owner received pick-up directions from U.S. West and believed that PRI was "almost * * * guarantee[d] that [it would] get [its] money from U.S. West." While a letter from U.S. West to WRC stated that "[p]ayment to [PRI] for hauling will be provided by [WRC]," PRI's transaction report lists U.S. West, not WRC, as the service name. PRI incurred unpaid hauling and storing expenses, together with finance charges, of $121,688.40.
On March 1, 1991, appellants Weiss and John Carlson entered property leased to Haul-A-Way Systems, Inc. in St. Paul to investigate WRC's storage of the telephone directories. Haul-A-Way leased the property from Richard Wybierala, owner of PRI, and had a permit to compost yard waste.
At the property, Weiss and John Carlson met Larry Carlson, a supervisor of the regulatory enforcement program of the Ramsey County solid waste division. According to Larry Carlson, he obtained permission from Steve Isaacson, Haul-A-Way's vice-president, to inspect the site. As a Ramsey County waste official, Larry Carlson routinely inspected the property and claims Isaacson also gave permission for the Hennepin County investigators to inspect the site. Isaacson, however, "strenuously den[ies] that [he] ever gave permission to either Dennis Weiss or John Carlson * * * to enter the property."
When investigating the compost piles located on the Haul-A-Way premises, Weiss found shredded directories, took photographs, and collected samples of the...
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