Posted on August 26, 2013 by David Flannery
On August 20, 2013, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit in Bell et al. v. Cheswick Generating Station, GenOn Power Midwest, L.P. answered a question of first impression: “whether the Clean Air Act preempts state law tort claims brought by private property owners against a source of pollution located within the state?” In this case, Plaintiffs filed claims under state tort law against the GenOn’s Cheswick Generating Station, a 570-megawatt coal-fired electrical generation facility in Springdale, Pennsylvania for allegations of ash and contaminants settling on their residential property (located within a mile of the plant). The Appeals Court held that “(b)ased on the plain language of the Clean Air Act and controlling Supreme Court precedent, we conclude that such source state common law actions are not preempted.”
This decision was based upon the U.S. Supreme Court precedent found in Intl. Paper Co. v. Ouellette. The question presented by Intl. Paper Co. v. Ouellette was “whether the [Clean Water] Act pre-empts a common-law nuisance suit filed in a Vermont court under Vermont law, when the source of the alleged injury is located in New York.” The U.S. Supreme Court held that: (1) Clean Water Act preempted Vermont nuisance law to extent that that law sought to impose liability on New York point source, but (2) Act did not bar aggrieved individuals from bringing nuisance claim pursuant to law of source state.
The Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia has previously applied the Intl. Paper Co. v. Ouellette decision to the Clean Air Act in Ashland Oil, Inc. v. Kaufman. In the Ashland Oil case The Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia held that Intl. Paper Co. v. Ouellette “requires the application of the statutory or common law of the source state to an interstate pollution dispute when the pollutants in question are regulated by the Clean Air Act. However, the procedural law of West Virginia shall be followed when the issues are being litigated in this State’s courts.”
Thus, it appears, at least in the 3rd Circuit, that while interstate common law disputes are preempted by the Clean Air Act, intrastate disputes are not.
Tags: interstate pollution, state tort law, electrical power, Intl. Paper Co. v. Ouellette
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