Sierra Club v. Cedar Point Oil Co.
United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit
73 F.3d 546 (1996)
The Sierra Club (plaintiff) sued Cedar Point Oil Company (defendant) under the Clean Water Act's citizen-suit provision for discharging produced water (contaminated wastewater from oil and gas extraction) into Galveston Bay without a required NPDES permit; after summary judgment established liability, the district court, following a bench trial, calculated a maximum possible penalty of $20,225,000 but reduced it to $186,070 based on statutory mitigating factors, providing detailed factual findings explaining the reduction. Cedar Point appealed.
Whether, to calculate an appropriate civil penalty under the Clean Water Act, a court should calculate the maximum possible penalty that could be assessed and then reduce that amount by any mitigating statutory factors.