Starlink Logistics, Inc. v. ACC, LLC

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STARLINK LOGISTICS INC., Plaintiff, v. ACC, LLC and SMELTER SERVICE CORP., Defendants.

No. 1:18-cv-00029

United States District Court, M.D. Tennessee, Columbia Division

May 1, 2024

MEMORANDUM OPINION

ELI RICHARDSON, UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE

Pending before the Court is “Plaintiff's Motion for Reconsideration” (Doc. No. 147, “Motion for Reconsideration”), which is supported by a memorandum in support thereof (Doc. No. 148, “Memorandum in Support”). Defendant ACC, LLC (“ACC”) filed a response in opposition (Doc. No. 154) to the Motion for Reconsideration.

The Motion for Reconsideration is directed at this Court's Order (Doc. No. 142, “Order”) and accompanying memorandum opinion (Doc. No. 141, “Opinion”) which granted in part and denied in part ACC's Motion for Summary Judgment (Doc. No. 100) as follows:

The Court GRANTS Defendant's Motion with respect to Plaintiff's 25 claims under the Clean Water Act (asserted in the complaint in this case), on Plaintiff's CERCLA cost-recovery claim (originally asserted in M.D. Tenn. Case No. 1:12-cv-00011), and on the negligence claim and nuisance claim originally asserted in M.D. Tenn. Case No. 1:12-cv-00011 [hereinafter, “Prior Case”]. The Court DENIES Defendant's Motion as to all other claims, i.e. all state-law claims asserted either in this case or in the amended complaint in the Prior Case except for the above-referenced negligence claim and nuisance claim.

(Doc. No. 142).

Via the Motion for Reconsideration, Plaintiff asserts that the Court committed one mistake after another in the parts of its Opinion wherein it granted ACC summary judgment on various claims of Plaintiff. Correctly implying that Rule 54(b) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure applies to the Order because the Order is interlocutory rather than final and appealable, Plaintiff asks the Court to reconsider its Order “to correct [clear] errors and prevent manifest injustice.” (Doc. No. 148 at 2-3).

As a district court in this circuit cogently explained:

Under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 54(b), a court may revise any order before it issues an entry of judgment adjudicating all of the claims and all of the parties' rights and liabilities. Fed.R.Civ.P. 54(b). “Rule 54(b), however, does not expressly provide for ... motions by parties and does not prescribe any standards or bases for revisions of prior decisions.” Lumpkin v. Farmers Grp., Inc., No. 05-2868 Ma/V, 2007 WL 6996777, at *3 (W.D. Tenn. July 6, 2007) (citation and internal quotation marks omitted).

Ashraf v. Adventist Health Sys./Sun-belt, Inc., No 2:17-CV-2839-SHM-DKV, 2018 WL 4431381, at *2 (W.D. Tenn. Sept. 17, 2018). Plaintiff correctly sets forth the standard that courts (including this one) have adopted:

[A] motion to reconsider may be granted if there is:

(1) a clear error of law; (2) newly discovered evidence; (3) an intervening change in controlling law; or (4) a need to prevent manifest injustice. Such motions are entrusted to the Court's sound discretion [and] is not an opportunity to re-argue a case and should not be used to re-litigate previously considered issues, to submit evidence which could have been previously submitted in the exercise of reasonable diligence, or to attempt to obtain a reversal of a judgment by offering the same arguments previously presented.

(Doc. No. 148 at 2-3) (citing Chapman-Robbins v. Tenn. Dep't of Transp., No. 3:19-cv-01128, 2021 WL 3136267, at *1 (M.D. Tenn. 2021)). As suggested above, Plaintiff relies on the first and fourth of these grounds variously to support its respective requests on several points. But in so doing, it faces the daunting reality that, as one district court in this circuit noted in the context of a motion for reconsideration under Rule 59(e), “[i]n essence, a judgment must be “dead wrong” to qualify as being clearly erroneous.” Lonardo v. Travelers Indem. Co., 706 F.Supp.2d 766, 809 (N.D. Ohio 2010), on reconsideration in part (July 21, 2010) (quoting H & A Land Corp. v. City of Kennedale, No. 04:02-458, 2005 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 25797, *5 (N.D. Tex. Oct. 24, 2005)). It stands to reason that the best way to show that the court was dead wrong is to provide a “zinger” or “gotcha” revelation-where, for example, the movant points out indisputably that the court materially misread the record, overlooked or plainly misapplied the controlling caselaw, or engaged in manifestly illogical reasoning. To the extent that the movant fails to provide something like this, the movant tends to show not clear error but rather, at best, arguable error. And so it is in this case, as discussed below.

Plaintiff begins the argument in its Memorandum in Support by stating, “[p]eeling away a decade of procedural complexity, this case is simple.” (Doc. No. 148 at 3). Setting aside whether Plaintiff's point is that any simpleton would have figured out that ACC's Motion for Summary Judgment should be denied in full, the undersigned is at a complete loss as to how Plaintiff could say that this case is “simple.” The existence of such simplicity comes as news to the undersigned, who perceives the case as complex in numerous respects even once “procedural” complexity is “peel[ed] away.” If the case was so “simple” in its non-procedural (i.e., substantive) aspects, then the Court must ask why Plaintiff submitted with ACC a joint motion for an extension of page limits for summary judgment briefing (Doc. No. 87) that fairly oozes representations of this case's complexity. Explaining the need for an extension, Plaintiff (together with ACC) stated in pertinent part as follows:

The claims and defenses asserted in this consolidated case involve complex issues of federal and state environmental laws, and the facts underlying such claims and defenses have occurred over several decades. The evidence adduced in this case during discovery is voluminous. For example, to date, ACC has produced nearly 26,000 pages of documents and tangible things, and received tens of thousands of pages of additional documents from the Plaintiff and third parties, including the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation (TDEC). The Parties therefore submit that an enlargement of the page limits for briefs, memoranda of law, as well as optional replies, is appropriate and will not unduly prejudice the Parties or delay the determination of the dispositive motions. The Parties submit that an enlargement of the page limit for such briefs and memoranda of law not to exceed fifty (50) pages and replies not to exceed fifteen (15) pages is reasonable and appropriate under the circumstances.

(Doc. No. 87 at 2) (emphasis added). The parties made good on their suggestion. Defendant filed a fifteen-paragraph motion for summary judgment (Doc. No. 100), supported by a fifty-page brief (Doc. No. 101) and statement of material facts comprising 62 paragraphs (Doc. No. 102), as well as an additional filing (a “Notice” with attachments) of 207 pages and then a fifteen-page reply (Doc. No. 125). For its part, Plaintiff filed a fifty-page brief in opposition to ACC's motion for summary judgment (Doc. No. 116, “Opposition to ACC's MSJ”), supported by more than 600 pages of exhibits thereto, followed by another filing (Doc. No. 117) containing well over 600 pages of additional material in support of its Opposition to ACC's MSJ, followed by yet another filing (Doc. No. 118) comprising almost 70 additional pages of such support, followed by a twentyeight-page response (Do. No. 119) to ACC's statement of material facts, followed by two declarations (Doc. No. 120, 121) that (together with their attachments) comprised 27 pages. And then there is the fact that Plaintiff asserted 27 different claims. Surely the Court can be forgiven for not seeing the “simplicity]” in all of this.

Given that Plaintiff filed nearly 1500 pages in opposition to ACC's motion for summary judgment, the Court is disinclined to hear Plaintiff's protestations that this case is “simple.” The Court is likewise disinclined to accept any possible suggestion that the undersigned should be able to understand the case better than he has and (based on the supposedly proper understanding) deny ACC's motion for summary judgment in full.^[1] The Court's purpose here is not to complain about any possible insinuation that it was not up to the task of deciding a dispositive motion in a “simple” case correctly (meaning, in Plaintiff's worldview, entirely in favor of Plaintiff). The Court's point is that in the aftermath of a court order resolving a dispositive motion in a case with issues so “complex” (Plaintiff's word, not the Court's word), a party aggrieved by that order may well have trouble convincing the court that things (in particular, the alleged error of the court's ways and the manifest injustice inflicted by the court's order) suddenly have become so simple (and clear). And so it is in this case.

With that overarching point having been made, the Court turns to each of Plaintiff's arguments in turn.

I. The Court's alleged error in finding that the concurrent-remedies doctrine is applicable.

Plaintiff asserts that the Court clearly erred^[2] in finding that the concurrent-remedies doctrine (a/k/a/ concurrent-remedy doctrine) applies here and thus bars, with respect to Plaintiff's claims under the Clean Water Act (“CWA”), Plaintiff's requested equitable remedies to the same extent that Plaintiff's requested legal remedies (civil penalties) are barred by the applicable statute of limitations (i.e., 28 U.S.C. § 2462).

Plaintiff first argues that the Court should have granted it an opportunity to respond to ACC's concurrent-remedies doctrine argument because ACC advanced the concurrent-remedies doctrine as a new reason for summary judgment in ACC's reply brief. To the extent that...