State Department of Health & Mental Hygiene v. Baltimore County

Digges, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. Eldridge, J., concurs in the result. This appeal involves a dispute between two governmental parties which they adamantly refuse to resolve without unseemly legal combat. Specifically, the State Department of Health and Mental Hygiene appeals from an order denying its motion for an interlocutory injunction commanding appellee Baltimore County to cease construction of, and the disposing of refuse in, a sanitary landfill until a valid permit and necessary approvals are issued by the Department of Health.

We concluded after oral argument on October 10, 1977, that the preliminary injunction should be granted, and that same day issued our mandate directing that the order of the Circuit Court for Baltimore County denying the injunction be vacated and the case remanded with directions to that court to issue the injunction for a sixty-day period. Our mandate further specified that the injunction could be dissolved or continued by the trial court on motion of either party, depending on the progress or results of the ongoing hearing being conducted by the Department of Health regarding the issuance of the permit. We now set out the reasons for our order. We note at the outset that it is a rare instance in which a trial court’s discretionary decision to grant or to deny a preliminary injunction will be disturbed by this Court; the present case, however, presents a peculiar conflux of circumstances, both factual and legal, some of which were not sufficiently brought to the trial court’s attention, such that on our analysis of all the facts as they are revealed to us on ⁵⁵¹ appeal, we think that one of those rare occasions has presented itself.

The happenings recorded by the parties are multiple in nature and quite complex, and the inferences therefrom are hotly disputed, particularly where the motivations of the parties for various actions taken are concerned. We shall not here recite the complete background of the dispute which preceded the appellant’s request for an injunction, however, as we deem most of it irrelevant to our decision, interesting though it may be as a case study in intragovernmental bureaucratic rivalry; we confine ourselves to relating those facts essential to a comprehension of the narrow issue presented for our determination. The Secretary of Health and Mental Hygiene is charged by statute with the “general care of the sanitary interests of the people of this State...,” Md. Code (1957,1971 Repl. Yol.), Art. 43, §§ 1H, 2.

The Code further provides that a system of refuse disposal for public use may not be installed, materially altered or extended, by either a public or private entity, without a permit from the Secretary to do so. Id. § 394 (a) (1977 Cum. Supp.). If it becomes necessary to make material changes in plans or specifications already properly approved, such changes must also be approved by the Secretary and a permit issued for them before they may be embodied in the actual construction.

Id. On December 23, 1975, a permit was issued to Baltimore County authorizing it to construct and place in operation a sanitary landfill near Parkton in the northern portion of the county in accordance with plans and specifications received by the State Department of Health on February 14, 1975, and incorporated by reference in the permit. In April of 1976, citizens residing in the area near the landfill site instituted suit in the Circuit Court for Baltimore County against both the county and the Department of Health, challenging the issuance of the permit and alleging, inter alia, that the design of the landfill would not protect the subterranean and surface waters from contamination and that the hearing held prior to issuance of the permit was procedurally defective in that it was not held in accordance with the necessary “contested case” standards, thereby ⁵⁵² denying plaintiffs their statutory rights. Meanwhile, construction proceeded, and on June 10, 1976, a letter from the chief of the Department’s Division of Solid Waste informed the county that recent inspections had disclosed limited areas of exposed bedrock within the floor of the first of five areas or “cells” in the landfill.

The letter additionally indicate^ that the bedrock should be removed and replaced with a compacted soil and that still further floor compacting or treatment might be required. 1 The letter also recommended that, in view of this potential requirement, the county proceed to develop- a plan for collection and disposal of any potential leachate migration, 2 and submit those plans to the Division for review. 3 The plans were duly submitted for this purpose in November of 1976; in February 1977 the department indicated to the county its conclusion that no further hearing would be required. Though the Department of Health was generally satisfied with the plans, it felt it advisable to forward them to the Water Resources Administration of the Department of Natural Resources for its analysis, since landfills potentially affect State waters. The Water Resources Administration, unlike the Department of Health, had reservations about the adequacy of the plans, and asked the county to agree to an additional administrative hearing before the Department of Health where the question could be further explored. Notwithstanding the fact that the county indicated on March 28 that it would decline to voluntarily submit to such a hearing, on May 9, 1977, a ⁵⁵³ hearing began, 4 with the county, according to the appellant, “voluntarily, but reluctantly, participating.” 5 On May 13, the county was informed by the chief of the Department of Health’s Division of Solid Waste that its proposed revised plans for construction of cell #1 had not yet been approved and that all construction in that cell must cease pending acceptance of these plans.

Construction continued, however, and on June 21 the county began depositing refuse in the landfill; on that same date the director of the Environmental Health Administration of the Department of Health issued an order revoking the original permit and directing that all construction and use cease. 6 The county ⁵⁵⁴ ignored that order, and on June 24 the Department of Health, although a defendant in the April 1976 suit brought by citizen-plaintiffs against it and the county, joined with the plaintiffs in filing, in that same action, a motion for injunctive relief which the trial judge orally indicated on the same day he would deny. A written order to that effect was filed on August 17,1977, 7 and the Department of Health, but not the citizens, appealed. We granted certiorari. While there is “[n]o principle ... better established, than that the granting or refusing of a writ of injunction, is a matter resting in the sound discretion of the court,” Shoemaker v. Mechanics Bank, 31 Md. 396, 398 (1869); see Kahl v. Con.

Gas, EL Lt. & Power Co., 189 Md. 655, 658 , 57 A. 2d 331, 332-33 (1948), it is also true that this discretion must be exercised by the chancellor upon a consideration of all the circumstances of the case. McKeever v. Realty Corp., 183 Md. 216, 225 , 37 A. 2d 305, 310 (1944); Williams v. M. & C.C. of Balto., 128 Md. 140, 157-58 , 97 A. 140, 145 (1916); E. Miller, Equity Procedure § 574, at 682 (1897). It is frequently said that a proper exercise of discretion requires the court to consider four factors: likelihood of success on the merits; the “balance of convenience”; irreparable injury, which can include the necessity to maintain the status quo; and, where appropriate, the public interest. See, e.g., Wieck v. Sterenbuch, 350 A. 2d 384 , 387 & n. 3 (D.C. 1976) (citation of authorities).

And it is the complainant who has the burden of presenting a case justifying the granting of a preliminary injunction, Baltimore v. Warren Manuf. Co., 59 Md. 96, 105 (1882), so that if the facts as stated in the bill of complaint or, when appropriate, as shown by the evidence, are not “full and sufficiently definite and clear, in support of the right asserted, and that such right has been violated,” the court will not order preliminary relief. Id. Here, though it may be ⁵⁵⁵ that the chancellor's discretion was reasonably exercised in view of the manner in which the case was presented to him, since he was not made aware of a fact presented to this Court at oral argument — that the need for the injunction was only of short duration — he had no knowledge of an important circumstance which was crucial to a proper evaluation of the traditional factors, and it is for this reason that we reverse his ruling. 8 Preliminarily, we observe that it has been held, and we accept the doctrine, that in litigation between the government and a private party, the court is not bound by the strict requirements of traditional equity as developed in private litigation: The United States ... is not bound to conform with the requirements of private litigation when it seeks the aid of the courts to give effect to the policy of Congress as manifested in a statute.

It is a familiar doctrine that an injunction is an appropriate means for the enforcement of an Act of Congress when it is in the public interest. [Shafer v. United States, 229 F. 2d 124, 128 (4th Cir. 1956).] See Federal Mar. Com’n v. Australia/U.S. Atlantic & Gulf Conf., 337 F. Supp. 1032, 1038 (S.D. N.Y. 1972); United States v. Pennzoil Company, 252 F. Supp. 962, 986 (W.D. Pa. 1965) (in anti-trust merger case, showing of injury to corporate defendants by granting preliminary injunction would have to be so proportionately persuasive as to submerge principle that status of public interest and not requirements of private litigation measure the propriety of relief; government not required to show hardship or injury to the public); Falkner v. Memorial Gardens Association, 298 S.W.2d 934, 943 (Tex.Civ.App. 1957); cf. Space Aero v. Darling, 238 Md. 93, 128 , 208 A. 2d 74 and 699, 92 (1965) (with regard to the scope of an injunction, courts of equity “may, and fre ⁵⁵⁶ quently do, go much farther both to give and withhold relief in furtherance of the public interest than they are accustomed to go where only private interests are involved”) (quoting Virginian Ry. v. Federation, 300 U. S. 515, 552 , 57 S. Ct. 592 , 81 L. Ed. 789 (1937), cert. denied, 382 U. S. 843 (1965). We think that this doctrine is to an even greater degree applicable where, as here, the primary antagonists are two government entities. With this in mind, the principle which emerges from our analysis of the applicability of the four factors noted above is this: Where two governmental parties, both presumptively acting in the public interest, are in irreconcilable conflict in the execution of their governmental responsibilities, a court of equity can usually best resolve the impasse by issuing a temporary injunction where that is necessary to preserve the status quo 9 until a decision on the merits is rendered, so long as that course does not result in greater harm to the public interest than would a refusal to interfere.

Thus in Pr. George’s Co. v. Md.-Nat’l Cap., 269 Md. 202 , 306 A. 2d 223 , cert. denied, 414 U. S. 1068 (1973), we indicated that declaratory relief was appropriate where public agencies are at loggerheads, id. at 209-10 [228], and further concluded that “[t]he controversy was so ‘ripe’ for declaratory relief that the chancellor ... properly issued the temporary injunction to prevent, pendente lite, grave injury to the Commission’s park and planning functions and recreational activities ... by [proposed actions of] the County Executive.” Id. at 214 [230], In our view, the standard we have just enunciated flows naturally from any attempt to apply the four factors in a case of this nature. Initially, we would observe that neither likelihood of success on the merits nor the “balance of convenience” factor is particularly relevant here, though we do not suggest that they could never be significant in a suit between governmental entities. As to likelihood of success, neither the parties nor the court gave the factor any attention, and we would agree that to do so would be inappropriate in ⁵⁵⁷ this case.

This is so because what is sought here is merely an opportunity to ascertain, through the hearing process, whether the county should be allowed to proceed with the landfill,