Summary of a Recent
Judicial Development in
Environmental Law

Res Judicata Precludes Claims against the Pennsylvania
Department of Environmental Protection

Eric H. Foy
National AgLaw Center Research Associate

Summary of Decision

In Mangan v. Brierre, Civil Action No. 06-3204, 2007 WL 475820 (E.D. Pa. Feb. 9, 2007), the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania granted Defendants' motion to dismiss and entered judgment in their favor. Plaintiff, dairy farmer, sued the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) for violating his rights to due process, property, and equal protection in its investigation of chemical contamination on his farm. Because Defendants filed actions to enforce compliance with the state court order, the instant court held that they were entitled to immunity. Additionally, many of Plaintiff's claims were precluded by his state court counterclaim, in which he made identical arguments against DEP employees.

Background

Plaintiff owned a dairy farm in Pennsylvania. Id. at *1. In 1998, Plaintiff sold part of his farm including a storage barn. Id. As a condition of sale, Plaintiff was required to empty the barn of all stored materials including fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides. Id. Plaintiff's neighbors saw him dumping the stored materials onto his fields and called the DEP. Id. Responding to the call, DEP officials visited Plaintiff's farm. Id. They confirmed the neighbors' allegations, retrieved bags of dumped fertilizer, and, after further tests, identified the presence of toxaphene, a substance that was banned by the United States Environmental Protection Agency. Id. On September 2, 1998, the DEP issued a search warrant for Plaintiff's farm, and one day later executed the warrant. Id. Upon execution of the warrant, DEP officials discovered the presence of "toxaphene, lindane, alachlor, and fonofos, all hazardous substances" under Section 103 of Pennsylvania's Hazardous Sites Cleanup Act (HSCA), 35 P.S. § 6020.103. Id.

In October 2000, the Assistant Council for the DEP "filed a writ of summons and a praecipe for a notice of lis pendens against Plaintiff's farm." Id. The DEP then filed suit against Plaintiff pursuant to Sections 301 and 507 of the HSCA, 35 P.S. §§ 6020.305 and 6020.507. Id. Plaintiff objected and filed a counterclaim in response. Id. The court held that all of Plaintiff's claims were either barred by the sovereign immunity of DEP officials or that the actions were permitted as a proper exercise of the Commonwealth's police power. Id. at *2. Therefore, the court granted the DEP's motion for summary judgment, finding that the farmer was a responsible person under the HSCA and could be held liable for the resulting recoverable costs. Id. On appeal, the Commonwealth Court affirmed. Id. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court and United States Supreme Court refused to hear the farmer's additional appeals. Id. The farmer then filed the instant complaint. Id.

Arguments

The farmer argued that DEP employees "violated his right to due process in the imposition of the lis pendens, brought its complaint against him in the wrong court, violated his right to equal protection, committed a takings violation when imposing the lis pendens, and conspired against him." Id. at *3.

DEP employees filed a Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss for failing to state a claim upon which relief could be granted, and a Rule 12(b)(1) motion to dismiss arguing that the Rooker-Feldman doctrine deprived the court of jurisdiction to hear the farmer's case. Id. They also claimed immunity to the farmer's allegations.

Analysis and Holdings

The court first addressed the DEP employees' Rule 12(b)(1) motion to dismiss based on the court's jurisdictional posture. Id. Defendants argued that Rooker-Feldman deprived the court of jurisdiction. Id. at *4. The Rooker-Feldman doctrine stands for the "proposition that 'lower federal courts possess no power whatever to sit in direct review of state court decisions,'" and is based on 28 U.S.C. § 1257. Id. After reviewing relevant case law, the court found that Rooker-Feldman was a doctrine "under fire," and held that it did "not bar [its] jurisdiction because none of [the farmer's] prayers for relief challenge[d] the finding [that the farmer was] a responsible person liable for cleanup costs under the Hazardous Sites Cleanup Act." Id. Additionally, the court found that the relief that the farmer requested did "not require reconsideration of the state court judgment, but [was] a federal challenge to the process involved in adjudicating [the farmer] responsible for the hazardous site cleanup." Id. For these reasons, the court held that it possessed "jurisdiction to consider the merits of Mangan's claims and the Department's Motion to Dismiss." Id. at *5.

After resolving the Rule 12(b)(1) motion to dismiss, the court then addressed whether the farmer's claims were precluded by res judicata. Id. Although preclusion was not a "jurisdictional bar" to the court's ability to hear the instant case, the court held that it "must give the same preclusive effect to the judgment as the courts in Pennsylvania, the state in which the judgment was entered, would give." Id. When the court reviewed the farmer's counterclaim he made in state court and compared it to his instant petition, it discovered "the two actions share[d] several of the same issues on the same grounds between the same parties in the same capacity." Id. The court found it could not grant relief to the farmer without "doing violence" to the state court's decision. Id. The two remaining issues that the farmer had waived in the previous litigation-the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act's potential preemption of the HSCA and the effect of an offer to buy the farmer's property-were not enough to create a cause of action. Id. at *6.

Finally, the court addressed the farmer's claim alleging that DEP employees "conspired with the innocent buyer [of the farm] to deprive him of his property under color of state law." Id. It found this claim was without merit "because the Commonwealth defendants [were] entitled to immunity and the innocent buyer did not act under color of state law." Id. The court reasoned that "[p]rosecutors acting in their official capacity are entitled to absolute immunity and DEP counsel [were] prosecutors when they file[d] actions to enforce compliance with court orders." Id.

The case was decided on February 9, 2007.