Original Source: Who Knew What, And When

Rockwell Int'l Corp. v. United States

From 1975 to 1989 Rockwell Int. Corp. was under a management contract with the Department of Energy to run the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant. Rockwell planned to dispose of its waste by mixing it with concrete thereby creating blocks that could be easily disposed. Stone, an employee, wrote an evaluation arguing the plan would not work. Rockwell proceeded anyway, and the plan failed, but not for the reasons that Stone cited. Stone went to the FBI and alleged wrongdoing at the plant; allegations which provided the basis for a federal search warrant. The charges were widely publicized. Stone brought an action for civil remedies provide under the False Claims Act which eliminates federal-court jurisdiction over actions under the Act that are based upon the public disclosure of allegations or transactions “unless the action is brought by the Attorney General or the person bringing the action is an original source of the information.” Rockwell argues that Stone’s information was based on publicly disclosed allegations. The amended complaint did not allege the defects in the concrete plan. Stone acknowledged that his claims were based on publicly disclosed allegations but asserted original-source status. This case addresses whether respondent, Stone, was an original source.

An “original source” is “an individual who has direct and independent knowledge of the information on which the allegations are based and has voluntarily provided the information to the Government before filing an action.” Whether Rockwell conceded Stone’s original-source status or not is irrelevant because the statute is jurisdictional (governs jurisdiction per se, not merely jurisdiction over the statute and therefore rightly construed as a limit on damages).

“Information on which the allegations are based” refers to information upon which the relators’ allegations are based, and not the information on which the publicly disclosed allegations that triggered the public disclosure are based. The words “allegations or transactions” differentiates the information that an original-source must have from information underlying public disclosure, referred to simply as “allegations.” Anyway, it would not make any sense to bar actions based on the information underlying a public disclosure when the relator had independent knowledge of that information, especially since this would require comparing the relator’s knowledge to the often unknowable information that was relayed to newspapers.

Rockwell argues that Stone must have satisfied the original-source exception at all stages of the action, and not, as Stone argues, simply in his original complaint. Absent some limitation to the initial complaint the Court interprets the word “allegations” to include Stone’s allegations at all stages of litigation. Even if this would discourage relators to submit to the Government’s litigation tactics of narrowing complaints this policy concern will not compel a different interpretation.

The only allegations that were supported in a jury verdict arose from wrongdoing that occurred after Stone had been fired, and Stone did not know that the concrete plan had failed – he predicted it. Even if prediction can qualify as direct and independent knowledge, it does not when its premise of cause and effect is wrong.

While the Government’s intervention might have provided an independent source of jurisdiction the statute draws a sharp distinction between actions brought by the Attorney General and those brought by private persons. An action brought by a person, taken over by the Attorney General becomes an action brought by the Attorney General and courts may dismiss a dispensable nondiverse party.

Justice Stevens, dissenting, argues that the information underlying a claim and the information underlying public disclosure of the allegations are distinct, and the Act’s use of the term “an original source” rather than “the original source” indicates that the relator need not be the sole source of the information. Jurisdiction is to be evaluated at the outset, not every time the complaint is amended.

This is a complicated opinion, wide swaths of which I do not fully comprehend.

"Tax Valuation" Means Assessment Valuation, Not Appraised Valuation

Limtiaco v. Camacho

Guam’s governor issued $400m in bonds to meet its obligations, but the Attorney General declined to sign the contracts because he calculated that they would put Guam over 10% indebtedness of its “aggregate tax valuation,” in violation of another statute. This evaluation, turns on whether that calculation should be made based on “assessed evaluation” or “appraised evaluation” because Guam assesses property at 35% of its appraised evaluation price. While the case was pending in the Ninth Circuit, Congress removed language vesting jurisdiction over appeals from Guam with that court. When applying for certiorari to review the Appeals court’s decision that the divestment applied both prospectively and to pending cases, Guam’s Attorney General filed his appeal after the 90 day window.

A timely filing of a petition for rehearing or a lower court’s appropriate decision to rehear an appeal may suspend the finality of a judgment and thereby reset the 90 day period by raising the question whether a court will modify the judgment and alter the parties’ rights. While the jurisdiction stripping statute and the case deciding that it applied to pending cases signaled the outcome in this case, it did not render final judgment, preventing the 90 day period from running.

Appraised value is the market value of a property; an assessed value is the value at which that property is taxed. The term “tax valuation” naturally means the value at which something is taxed. The Guam Supreme Court improperly used the word “taxed” to modify the property to be included, rather than to modify the term “valuation.” The Guam legislature could not modify the definition because the statute at issue is a federal statute, and if Congress had intended to apply the appraised value it could simply have used the term. While Guam could set its assessment valuation at 100% of appraised value there is a strong political check against it doing so by the voters whose property is to be taxed. Because the statute protects Guamamians as well as the United States this is not a case where deference is due the Guam Supreme Court in its construction of its Organic Act.

The EPA has the Authority to Regulate Carbon Emissions and the Duty to Decide

Massachusetts v. EPA

This case addresses whether the EPA has the authority, and additionally, whether it has the responsibility, under the Clean Air Act (CAA) to regulate carbon dioxide. The CAA provides that “The EPA Administrator shall by regulation prescribe (and from time to time revise) in accordance with the provisions of this section, standards applicable to the emission of any air pollutant from any class or classes of new motor vehicle or new motor vehicle engines, which in his judgment cause, or contribute to, air pollution which may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare …” The term “Air pollutant” is defined as “any air pollution agent or combination of such agents, including any physical, chemical, biological, radioactive … substance or matter which is emitted into or otherwise enters the ambient air.” “Welfare” is defined to include “effects on … weather … and climate.”

Justice Stevens, for the Court, begins by surveying the history of pollution research and regulation, noting that the wording of the statute was changed to address pollutants that were reasonably foreseeable to cause harm, rather than just those determined to do so. In 2003 the EPA determined that it did not have the authority to regulate carbon emissions and that even if it did it would be unwise to do so at that time. The former conclusion was largely based on Congress’ decision not to enact an amendment specifically granting the EPA that power, and the conclusion that the CAA was directed at local, not worldwide, pollutants. Additionally, the EPA concluded that if carbon dioxide were a pollutant the only way to address it would be to regulate fuel economy, which Congress had already done on its own. The latter conclusion was based on a report declaring that a causal link between carbon emissions and global warming “[could not] be unequivocally established” and that its regulation might interfere with Congressional policy-making in the area.

The lower court found that petitioners, who alleged that global warming was “harmful to humanity at large,” had failed to allege the “particularized injuries” required for standing. Standing requires actual or imminent injury fairly traceable to the defendant and which a favorable decision by the court is likely to redress. However, Congress may accord a procedural right to protect concrete interests without meeting all the normal standards for redressability and immediacy. States, as opposed to normal litigants, may procede as parens patriae to protect quasi-sovereign interests. The State of Massachusetts, therefore, has satisfied “the most demanding standards of the adversarial process.”

That the harms of global warming are widely shared does not diminish Massachusetts’ interest in the outcome of this case, especially due to the Commonwealth’s ownership of a great deal of coastal property. While the EPA does not dispute the causal connection between greenhouse gas emissions and global warming, it argues that the emissions from new motor vehicles contributes so insignificantly to Massachusetts’ injuries that the EPA cannot be held to answer for them. The Court rejects the argument that incremental steps fail to redress greater harms. “That a first step might be tentative does not by itself support the notion that federal courts lack jurisdiction to determine whether that step conforms to the law.” Anyway, those emissions count for 6% of the United States’ carbon emissions, constituting a “meaningful contribution.”

A plaintiff need not show that the remedy will relieve his every injury, and the EPA’s voluntary emissions reduction program suggests that the EPA at least thinks the issue is worth its time and attention. An agency’s discretion to choose how best to marshal its limited resources and personnel to carry out its delegated responsibilities is at its height when the agency decides not to bring an enforcement action, but a refusal to undertake a rulemaking operation is different in that it is more apt to involve legal as opposed to factual analysis; such refusals are subject to “extremely limited” and “highly deferential” review.

On its face the CCA authorizes the EPA to regulate any air pollutant and any physical, chemical, substance or matter emitted. The EPA should look to the statute and not to congressional history to determine its mandate, and in any case that congressional history is ambiguous. As opposed to Brown v. Williamson Tobacco Corp. where the Court determined that tobacco was not meant to be included in the FDA’s mandate to control drugs or devices, this legislation would not lead to a ban on carbon emissions, but only regulation. Also, there is no direct conflict with congressional legislation in this case, and Congress could not have acted against a regulatory backdrop of disclaimers of regulatory authority because prior to the action that instigated this case the EPA never disavowed the authority to regulate carbon emissions. The EPA’s obligations may overlap with Congress’ authority, but may still be exercised without inconsistency.

The EPA must make an independent determination as to whether carbon emissions present a reasonable danger to the public welfare. That other acts or legislation may also address the matter is a different issue, and has no bearing on whether carbon emissions present such a danger. If the EPA wishes to decide that carbon emissions do not present such a danger, because of a tenuous causal relationship or otherwise, it must say so, but it may not shirk the duty to make the determination itself.

Chief Justice Roberts, for the dissent, would declare the matter nonjusticiable. Relaxing standing requirements because the action is brought on behalf of a State has o basis in the Court’s jurisprudence. Congress could provide public litigants expanded power to pursue such claims, and knows how when it wants to, but has not done so here. The case that forms the basis for the distinction between public and private litigants on which the majority relies did so only for the purposes of remedies, not standing. Parens patriae standing actually raises an additional bar – articulating a semi-sovereign interest, and a state must still show that some of its citizens have standing to sue. The majority turns a necessary condition into a sufficient condition. Those citizens lack standing because global warning is the very essence of a generalized harm, and because any harm by rising sea levels (on which they base their argument about harm) is by definition conjectural and indirect insofar as the cause of any sea level change is due not only to new U.S. auto emissions, but to all emissions all over the world. On the redressability front these considerations make it impossible to show that regulation would be likely to redress Massachusetts’ grievances.

Justice Scalia argues that the statute conditions regulation on the EPA administrator’s judgment as to whether certain pollutants may be reasonably anticipated to endanger public health or welfare. The majority would require the administrator to either conclude that carbon emissions do pose a threat, do not pose a threat, or give a reason for not doing so. Meanwhile, given that choice, the majority limits the EPA Administrator to deciding that the causal link is not proven, rejecting other valid arguments such as inefficiency and a desire to leave the policy in the hands of the President and Congress, both of which have shown a desire to address the problem. True, the Administrator’s judgment is limited to the danger (or lack thereof) presented by carbon emissions, but he is not limited in his method of reasoning. In any case, the EPA has stated that it does not believe the causal link has been sufficiently proven.

While one possible reading of the statue is to include each term following the word “including” in the class of terms the EPA may regulate, but another possible reading is that where those terms are broader than the general category they must be considered to be limited to that category. For example, the class “any American automobile, including any truck or minivan” would not include foreign trucks or minivans. In this case, the EPA is justified in deciding that carbon emissions must be an “air pollutant agent,” and because the statute is ambiguous the EPA is entitled to Chevron deference. Such deference is also due the EPA’s decision that “air pollution” is limited to discrete geographical air pollution, and not global atmospheric pollution.