Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee at Knoxville.
Nos. 3:13-cv-00505; 3:13-cv-00666; 3:14-cv-00020; 3:15-cv-00017; 3:15-cv-00274;
3:15-cv-00420; 3:15-cv-00460; 3:15-cv-00462; 3:16-cv-00635;
3:16-cv-00636—Thomas A. Varlan, District Judge.
Argued: March 11, 2022
Decided and Filed: June 13, 2022
Before: SUTTON, Chief Judge; GILMAN and ROGERS, Circuit Judges.
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AMENDED OPINION
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RONALD LEE GILMAN, Circuit Judge. This consolidated action involves a group of
individuals (Plaintiffs) who worked, or had spouses or next of kin who worked, on the Tennessee
Valley Authority’s (TVA’s) coal-ash cleanup, removal, and recovery project at the Kingston
Fossil Fuel Plant (the Plant) in Roane County, Tennessee. Plaintiffs sued Jacobs Engineering
Group, Inc. (Jacobs)—an entity that has served as the TVA’s prime contractor for the coal-ash
cleanup since February 2009—for numerous common-law torts. None of the Plaintiffs were
employees of Jacobs; they instead worked for various subcontractors.
After this court reversed and remanded the district court’s initial decision to dismiss the
case for lack of jurisdiction, the district court bifurcated the case and proceeded with Phase I to
determine whether Jacobs should be held generally liable to Plaintiffs. A jury found that Jacobs
had a duty to Plaintiffs, that Jacobs breached that duty, and that Jacobs’s actions were a potential
cause of Plaintiffs’ alleged injuries. Phase II, which has not yet occurred, is intended to assess
specific causation with respect to individual Plaintiffs and the extent to which they are entitled to
damages.
Both before and after Phase I of the trial, Jacobs filed motions seeking derivative
immunity from suit based on its status as a government contractor. The district court denied
Jacobs’s motions. Jacobs subsequently filed yet another motion seeking derivative immunity
based on what it claimed were intervening changes in the applicable law. The district court
construed the motion as one for reconsideration under Rule 54(b) of the Federal Rules of Civil
Procedure. It again denied Jacobs’s motion. This interlocutory appeal concerning Jacobs’s
alleged immunity followed. For the reasons set forth below, we AFFIRM the district court’s
denial of derivative contractor immunity. |