United States v. Citgo Petroleum Corp.

893 F. Supp. 2d 848, 42 Envtl. L. Rep. (Envtl. Law Inst.) 21093, 2012 WL 4068675, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 131339
District Court, S.D. Texas·Decided September 14, 2012·No. Criminal Action No. C-06-563·Published·Cited by 1 cases

Opinion

MEMORANDUM OPINION & ORDER

JOHN D. RAINEY, Senior District Judge.

Pending before the Court is the Motion of Community Members to be Declared Victims under the Crime Victim[s’] Rights Act (Dkt. No. 776) and Motion of Additional Community Member1 to be Declared [850]*850Victim under the Crime Victim[s’] Rights Act (Dkt. No. 812), to which Defendants CITGO Petroleum Corporation and CIT-GO Refining and Chemicals Company, L.P.’s (collectively “CITGO”) have responded (Dkt. Nos. 780, 811)2 and the Community Members have replied (Dkt. Nos. 798, 818). Having considered the motion, responses, replies, oral argument of counsel, record, and applicable law, the Court is of the opinion that the Community Members’ motions (Dkt. Nos. 776, 812) should be GRANTED.

1. Background

In April 2008, the Government moved to have more than 300 members of the Corpus Christi community — including the same Community Members bringing the present motion — designated as victims under the Crime Victims’ Rights Act (CVRA), 18 U.S.C. § 3771. (Dkt. No. 574.) Shortly thereafter, the Court began hearing testimony from a representative sample of the alleged victims — including six of the Community Members3 — as well as CITGO employees, Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) agents, and a series of experts offered by the Government and CITGO.

More than a year ago, the Court granted CITGO’s Motion to Exclude the Government’s Purported “Victim” Witnesses (Dkt. No. 575), concluding that these individuals could not be considered victims under CVRA because they could not demonstrate a causal connection between their alleged injuries and the offenses of which CITGO was convicted. (Dkt. No. 729.) In reviewing the scientific evidence before it, the Court recognized that “none of the medical records documenting more than 950 office visits diagnose[d] chemical exposure and none of the other medical records even mention chemical odors.” (Id. at 7.) The Court further found that because the monitoring data from the Corpus Christi area did not show readings of volatile organic compounds that exceeded state and federal regulatory levels, there was no proof that the concentration of chemicals in the emissions from Tanks 116 and 117 rose to the level necessary to cause health effects. (Id. at 6-7.) Because many of the alleged victims were either elderly persons who struggled with a number of common ailments, had serious medical conditions, and/or admitted to smoking cigarettes, and because all the alleged victims also lived near a group of oil refineries in Corpus Christi, the Court concluded that the evidence offered could not establish that the alleged victims’ ailments were caused by Tanks 116 and 117 and not by one or more of these myriad of other factors. (Id. at 5-7.) The Government filed a motion to reconsider the Court’s Order (Dkt. 733), which the Court denied on July 27, 2011, 2011 WL 3269688. (Dkt. No. 737.)

[851]*851On July 6, 2012, the Community Members filed the present motion asking the Court to consider “two new arguments, never advanced by the Government, to be recognized as ‘victims.’ ” (Dkt. No. 776 at 2.) In the currently-pending motion, the Community Members argue that they do not need to prove that they suffered medically-documented physical injuries or illnesses from CITGO’s crimes in order to be declared “crime victims” under the CVRA. The Community Members further claim that they have suffered other forms of harm that qualify them as victims, including breathing noxious and irritating gases, emotional distress, property damage, and risk of future injury.

On August 22, 2012, the Court denied the Community Members’ motion as untimely. (Dkt. No. 799.) The Community Members then petitioned the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit for a writ of mandamus directing this Court to give them crime victim status under the CVRA. The Fifth Circuit concluded that “[t]he CVRA does not contain a time limit within which putative crime victims must seek relief in the district court” and granted the Community Members’ mandamus petition “to the extent that the district court must hear all new victim status arguments being submitted pre-sentencing by pro bono counsel.” In re: Jewell Allen, 701 F.3d 734, 735 (5th Cir.2012).

II. Legal Standard

The CVRA provides that victims of a federal crime may appear and be heard during some phases of the prosecution of the defendant charged with that crime. 18 U.S.C. § 3771(a). The statute defines “crime victim” as “a person directly and proximately harmed as a result of the commission of a Federal offense.... ” Id. § 3771(e).

The Fifth Circuit recently set forth the proximate cause standard under the CVRA as follows:

An act is a but-for cause [ ] of an event if the act is a sine qua non of the event— if, in other words, the absence of the act would result in the non-occurrence of the event. Conversely, an act is not a but-for cause of an event if the event would have occurred even in the absence of the act. Moser v. Tex. Trailer Corp., 623 F.2d 1006, 1013 (5th Cir.1980) (quoting W. Prosser, The Law of Torts § 41, at 238 (4th ed. 1971)). As Professor David Robertson has explained, ascertaining the existence of but-for causation requires a court to create “a mental picture of a situation identical to the actual facts of the case in all respects save one: the defendant’s wrongful conduct is now ‘corrected’ to the minimal extent necessary to make it conform to the law’s requirements.” David W. Robertson, The Common Sense of Cause in Fact, 75 Tex. L. Rev. 1765, 1770 (1997). Then, the court asks “whether the injuries that the plaintiff suffered would probably still have occurred had the defendant behaved correctly in the sense indicated.” Id. at 1771. Only if the answer to that question is “No” is the defendant’s conduct a but-for-cause of the plaintiffs injuries.

In re Fisher, 649 F.3d 401, 403 (5th Cir. 2011).

Both the Fifth Circuit and the CVRA itself are silent as to the definition of “harm.” However, Merriam-Webster defines “harm” as “physical or mental damage: injury.” Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed. 2006); see also American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (3d ed. 1992) (defining harm as “physical or psychological injury or damage”).

[852]*852III. Analysis

A. Are the Community Members “crime victims” under the CVRA?

To determine whether the Community Members are crime victims, the Court must first identify the behavior constituting “commission of a Federal offense.” If CITGO’s criminal behavior caused the Community Members direct and proximate harm, then they are victims under the CVRA.

CITGO was convicted of Counts Four and Five of the Superseding Indictment, which alleged that, “[f|rom on or about January, 1994, and continuing to on or about May, 2003 ...

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United States v. Citgo Petroleum Corp., 893 F. Supp. 2d 848, 42 Envtl. L. Rep. (Envtl. Law Inst.) 21093, 2012 WL 4068675, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 131339 (S.D. Tex. 2012).

893 F. Supp. 2d 848 (United States v. Citgo Petroleum Corp.) — published by Counsel Stack Legal Research, free access to 12M+ legal documents.

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