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to the recalcitrant operator. First, a landowner may suffer federally compensable injury to his <br />property - that is, his financial status - as a result of maintaining litigation to compel a coal operator <br />to pay full compensation for the subsidence damage to the landowner's home. If some or all <br />litigation costs aze unrecoverable in a landowner's_subsidence damage action under the so-called <br />"American Rule" (as was the case here -see State Court Decision at 5), they are clearly recoverable <br />under 30 U.S.C. § 1270(f) or a state-law counterpart once the landowner establishes the coal <br />operator's violation in refusing to compensate at the outset. Because the issuance of a notice of <br />violation would confirm the landowner's right to recover for injury to his property in the form of <br />litigation costs, OSM cannot lawfully withhold enforcement action merely because the operator has <br />been brought to justice in civil court on the issue of direct damages prior to this Board's resolution <br />of the matter. <br />Second, of even more importance to the public interest underlying SMCRA, issuance of a <br />notice of violation for failure to compensate a landowner is crucial to establishment of each <br />operator's complete history of violations for permit suspension or revocation and civil penalty <br />computation purposes. See 30 C.F.R. §§ 843.13 and 845.13(b)(1) and their state program <br />counterparts. SMCRA simply cannot work as Congress planned if OSM and state regulators fail to <br />cite violations that plainly existed for a substantial amount of time, only to be corrected through <br />judicial action beforethis Board reaches the merits of an appeal concerning the failure of state and <br />federal regulators to enforce the pertinent regulations. <br />Thus, even if BRl could violate SMCRA only by failing to compensate the Tatums -which, <br />again, the Tatums resolutely deny-the administrative record in this case plainly establishes that BRI <br />committed that violation by failing to compensate the Tatums prior to OSM's disposition of the <br />6 <br />