## Facts

- A March 28, 1979 accident occurred at Three Mile Island Unit 2 (TMI-2) near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
- Plaintiffs were the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, two nearby Pennsylvania municipalities, and a proposed class of Pennsylvania municipalities within 100 miles of TMI-2.
- Defendants were the plant owners and entities involved in design, construction, and maintenance of TMI-2.
- Plaintiffs sought damages for government response and operational costs allegedly incurred because of the incident, including overtime/personnel costs, emergency purchases, lost work time, and other incident-related expenditures.
- The municipal plaintiffs also sought damages for alleged reductions in real estate tax revenues attributed to population loss and diminished property values.
- The municipalities further sought equitable relief declaring the facility a nuisance and ordering abatement.
- Defendants moved for summary judgment and submitted affidavits, including from a county tax assessment official, showing the two municipalities’ real estate tax revenues increased in the year after the incident.
- Plaintiffs did not submit counter-affidavits or other evidence creating a factual dispute on the tax-revenue allegation.

## Issues

1. Whether governmental entities may recover, in tort, the costs of emergency response and related public-service expenditures absent injury to their own property or proprietary interests.
2. Whether the municipalities produced evidence sufficient to show a genuine dispute that the incident caused compensable lost real estate tax revenues.
3. Whether plaintiffs satisfied Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 56(e) by producing specific facts, beyond pleadings, to show genuine issues for trial.
4. Whether a court may declare the facility a nuisance and order abatement on the record presented at summary judgment.

## Decision

- The court granted defendants’ motion for summary judgment on all claims.
- The court held plaintiffs failed under Rule 56(e) to produce evidence creating a triable dispute on alleged lost tax revenues, given unrebutted affidavits showing increased revenues.
- The court rejected recovery for governmental response costs as nonactionable public-service expenditures not tied to a cognizable injury to plaintiffs’ own property or proprietary interests.
- The court dismissed the nuisance and abatement request for lack of evidentiary support and because the relief sought extended beyond redressing a concrete municipal property injury in a context subject to extensive regulation.

## Legal Principles

- Under Rule 56(e), once a properly supported summary-judgment motion is made, the nonmovant cannot rely on allegations in pleadings and must present specific facts showing a genuine issue for trial.
- Governments generally may not shift the costs of performing public duties (e.g., emergency response and operational services) to private defendants as tort damages without a distinct injury to government-owned property or proprietary interests.
- Claims seeking declaration of nuisance and abatement of a highly regulated facility require a concrete evidentiary showing of ongoing or imminent harm tied to a legally protected interest; otherwise, summary judgment is appropriate.

## Conclusion

The court entered summary judgment for defendants, concluding that the governmental entities failed to produce evidence supporting claimed tax-revenue losses, could not recover incident-response expenditures as tort damages absent injury to their own property or proprietary interests, and did not support nuisance and abatement relief with specific facts sufficient to warrant trial.


In re TMI Litig. (Gov’t Entities Claims), 544 F. Supp. 853 (M.D. Pa. 1982)