The U.S. Justice Department on Monday requested that a federal court hold off on ruling on South Carolina’s motion for summary judgment in its lawsuit over the breach of agreement for disposition of surplus defense plutonium now stored in the state.
The U.S. District Court for South Carolina should first rule on the federal government’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit, according to the DOJ. “The Court should resolve defendants’ preliminary objections before rushing into the potentially thorny and fact-bound issues that may arise on summary judgment,” its motion says. “A decision on the Motion to Dismiss may moot the Motion for Summary Judgment, or, at the very least, focus and narrow the issues.”
In a lawsuit filed in February, South Carolina said it is owed up to $100 million after the Department of Energy failed to meet the Jan. 1, 2016, deadline set under a 2003 agreement to process or ship outside the state 1 metric ton of plutonium held at the DOE’s Savannah River Site. The defendants are DOE and its semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration.
The state is requesting that the court skip a trial and order DOE to immediately remove 1 metric ton of plutonium from the state, ship out another ton by the end of the year, suspend further shipments of plutonium, and pay the $1 million per day fine that capped off in April. The federal government counters that the court does not have jurisdiction over much of the case, and that the state has no cause of action under the federal Administrative Procedure Act to demand removal of the plutonium.
Meanwhile, the South Carolina Regional Development Alliance this week also asked the court to reject the state’s motion to prevent the economic development group from intervening in the case as a plaintiff. While the state said the organization “cannot show that it possesses an interest in the subject matter of this action” and “is no different than … other citizens in the state,” the alliance countered that it has concrete interests in the region that it cannot be confident the state will advance. The federal government on Monday also filed a motion against the organization’s involvement in the case.
