Justia U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals Opinion Summaries

Defendant CB&I Constructors, Inc. negligently caused a June 2002 wildfire that burned roughly 18,000 acres of the Angeles National Forest in Southern California. The United States brought a civil action against CB&I to recover damages for harm caused by the fire. The jury found CB&I liable and awarded roughly $7.6 million in fire suppression, emergency mitigation, and resource protection costs, and $28.8 million in intangible environmental damages. CB&I challenged the award for environmental damages. The district court held that the government provided sufficient evidence for the jury to determine the amount of environmental damages, and that the resulting award was not grossly excessive. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed, holding (1) under California law, the government was entitled to full compensation for all the harms caused by the fire, including intangible environment harm; and (2) substantial evidence supported the jury's determination of the amount of environmental damages, and the award was not grossly excessive. View "United States v. CB&I Constructors, Inc." on Justia Law

This case was a challenge to the State of Washington's Building Code brought by the Building Industry Association of Washington (BIAW) along with individual builders and contractors. The impetus for this challenge was the State's 2009 requirement that new building construction must meet heightened energy conservation goals. At issue was the Energy Policy and Conservation Act's (EPCA) preemption-exemption provision, which expressly preempts state standards requiring greater efficiency than federal standards but exempts from preemption state building codes promoting energy efficiency, so long as those codes meet statutory conditions. Plaintiffs argued that the Building Code did not satisfy EPCA's conditions for exemption. The district court held that Washington had satisfied EPCA's conditions and therefore was not preempted. The Ninth Circuit affirmed, holding that the Building Code satisfied the conditions Congress set forth in the EPCA for exemption from federal preemption. View "Bldg. Ind. Ass'n of Wash. v. Wash. State Bldg. Code" on Justia Law

This case arose when defendants contended that they were engaged in bona fide mining activities on National Forest System lands, which justified full-time residency on their respective claim sites. The court held that the Forest Service could regulate residential occupancy of bona fide mining claims within the national forests, and that 36 C.F.R. 261.10(b) was consistent with the mining laws and not unconstitutionally vague. The court further held that in a criminal proceeding predicated on the Forest Service's administrative determination, a defendant could obtain judicial review of the agency action under the Administrative Procedures Act (APA), 5 U.S.C. 500 et seq., so long as defendant complied with the procedural requirements for direct review and the APA's statute of limitations has not expired. Thus, defendant Everist was not entitled to judicial review of the Forest Service's determination that his residency was not reasonably incident to mining, because he did not exhaust his administrative remedies as required by the APA. Defendant Backlund, on the other had, did administratively exhaust his claim that the Forest Service's denial of his proposed plan of operations was not in accordance with law. Therefore, Backlund was entitled to judicial review of the agency decision in the context of his criminal prosecution.

The Government appealed from an award of attorneys' fees to a plaintiff conservation group in a long-running dispute involving federal grazing permits in Idaho. At issue was whether the district court properly awarded fees to plaintiff for legal work done in the administrative proceedings conducted before the civil litigation in which the district court held that the IBLA had acted arbitrarily and capriciously in upholding the Government's award of some of the grazing permits. The court vacated the district court's award of fees and remanded for it to enter an award that excluded the representing fees for the administrative proceedings pursuant to the court's interpretation of Sullivan v. Hudson and 28 U.S.C. 2412(d)(1)(A).

Plaintiff environmental groups sought to enjoin the implementation of a statute, Section 1713 of the 2011 Appropriations Act, that ordered the Secretary of the Interior to remove a portion of a distinct population of gray wolves from the Protections of the Endangered Species Act (ESA), 16 U.S.C. 1531, without regard to any statute or regulation that might otherwise apply. Plaintiffs brought this action contending that Section 1713 violated the separation of powers. The district court rejected plaintiffs' claims on the grounds that Congress had acted within its constitutional authority to change the laws applicable to pending litigation. The court held that because this case was controlled by Robertson v. Seattle Audubon Society, the court affirmed the judgment.

The Hawaii Longline Association appealed the approval of a consent decree entered into by plaintiff environmental groups and defendant federal agencies affecting the regulation and management of the Hawaii shallow-set, swordfish longline fishery. Appellant challenged the district court's vacatur of a regulation increasing the limit on incidental interactions between longline fishing boats and loggerhead turtles and replacing the increased limit with a lower limit that was previously in effect. Appellant argued that the district court abused its discretion in approving a consent decree that violated federal law by allowing the National Marine Fisheries Service to change duly promulgated rules without following the procedural rulemaking requirements of the Magnuson-Stevens Act, 16 U.S.C. 1851-1856, and the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), 5 U.S.C. 500 et seq. Because the consent decree was injunctive in nature, the court had jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. 1292(a)(1). The consent decree did not purport to make substantive changes to the Fishery regulations so the rulemaking provisions of the Magnuson Act and the APA did not apply. The district court did not clearly err in finding that a return to lower incidental take limits was more protective of loggerhead turtles. Accordingly, the judgment was affirmed.

This appeal arose from a long-running conflict which has devolved to the present remaining dispute as to the classification of approximately 9,000 acre feet (AF) of water released between June 17 through 24 of 2004 from the Nimbus and New Melones reservoirs within California's Central Valley Project (CVP) by defendant, the U.S. Department of the Interior, acting through the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation (collectively, federal defendants). Plaintiffs, water agencies, contended that the Department of the Interior abused its discretion in failing to apply the latter June 2004 releases against the 800,000 AF of CVP yield especially designated for fish, wildlife, and habitat restoration under section 3406(b)(2) of the CVP Improvement Act, Pub. L. No. 102-575, 106 Stat. 4600. Because the court found that the water agencies have standing and the accounting which the Department of Interior conducted for the latter June 2004 releases did not constitute an abuse of discretion, the court affirmed the district court's orders granting summary judgment in favor of the federal defendants and against the water agencies.

TIRN appealed from the district court's dismissal of its claim on res judicata grounds. TIRN alleged that the State Department failed to satisfy its consultation and environmental assessment obligations under the National Environmental Policy Act, 42 U.S.C. 4321 et seq., and the Endangered Species Act (ESA), 16 U.S.C. 1531 et seq., in conducting annual certifications of countries exempted from the general ban on shrimp imports. At issue was whether TIRN's current lawsuit for NEPA and ESA violations was precluded by its earlier lawsuits challenging the State Department's regulations implementing the Section 609(b)(2) of Public Law 101-162 certification process. The court held that because TIRN's current challenge arose from the same transactional nucleus of facts as earlier litigation, res judicata barred its claims. Accordingly, the court affirmed the district court.

Plaintiff, a photojournalist, contended that viewing restrictions at a Bureau of Land Management (BLM) horse roundup violated her First Amendment right to observe government activities. The district court denied plaintiff's motion for a preliminary injunction, concluding that most of the relief sought was moot because the roundup ended in October 2010. Alternatively, the district court concluded that plaintiff was unlikely to succeed on the merits because the restrictions did not violate the First Amendment. The court held that, because the preliminary injunction motion sought unrestricted access to future horse roundups, and not just the one that took place in 2010, the case was was not moot. With regards to plaintiff's First Amendment claim, the district court erred by failing to apply the well-established qualified right of access balancing test set forth in Press-Enterprise Co. v. Superior Court. Accordingly, the court remanded the case to the district court to consider in the first instance whether the public had a First Amendment right of access to horse gathers, and if so, whether the viewing restrictions were narrowly tailored to serve the government's overriding interests.

Just when Defendants-Appellees United States Forest Service and Joseph P. Stringer (USFS), and Intervenor-Defendant Arizona Snowbowl Resort Limited Partnership (ASRLP) had successfully defended an agency decision to allow snowmaking at a ski resort on federal land all the way to the United States Supreme Court, "new" plaintiffs appeared. Represented by the same attorney as the losing parties in the first lawsuit, the "new" plaintiffs—who had closely monitored the first litigation—brought certain environmental claims that were virtually identical to some that the attorney had improperly attempted to raise in the earlier lawsuit, for no apparent reason other than to ensure further delay and forestall development. "Although it is apparent to [the Ninth Circuit] that the 'new' plaintiffs and their counsel have grossly abused the judicial process by strategically holding back claims that could have, and should have, been asserted in the first lawsuit… [the Court was] compelled to hold that laches [did] not apply here" because the USFS and ASRLP could not demonstrate that they suffered prejudice, as defined by the applicable case law. The Court held that the Save the Peaks Plaintiffs' claims failed under NEPA and the APA. Accordingly, the Court held that the district court properly granted summary judgment to the USFS and ASRLP.