Forest Service Litigation Weekly–April 20, 2015

Attached are the Weekly itself, and the court order related to the below:

Big Thorne │Forest Management │ Region 10

Circuit Court Denies Appellants’ Motion for Emergency Injunction of the Big Thorne Project on
the Tongass National Forest in Southeast Alaska Conservation Council et al. v. U.S. Forest
Service et al
. On April 16, 2015, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit denied
appellants, Southeast Alaska Conservation Council et al.’s motion for an emergency injunction
pending appeal in their challenge to the Big Thorne Project and the 2008 Tongass Forest Plan. The
Circuit’s order also granted the unopposed motion the consolidate the appeals and expedite briefing on
the merits. (15-35232, 9th Cir.)

Oh.. and here’s a disclaimer, which is valuable for any reading of this extremely useful newsletter:

The NFS Litigation Weekly Newsletter is provided to Forest Service employees for internal, informational purposes and is not intended to provide a legal/policy opinion or interpretation of its subject matter. Information presented in the Litigation Weekly is publicly available via official court records. Official court records should be consulted for the most complete and accurate discussion of each case.

2015_04_20 NFS Litigation Weekly20150416CircuitOrderEmergInjSEAC_v_USFS_BigThorne

1 thought on “Forest Service Litigation Weekly–April 20, 2015”

  1. The disclaimer reminded me that I often wondered if the agency had a process for providing legal/policy opinions on the results of court cases to its employees. While we would get occasional summaries of recent litigation from our OGC attorneys, we were also told hat “OGC does not make FS policy.” The unofficial agency policy seemed to be that we were to pay no attention to results of individual cases. (Maybe that has something to do with the FS track record?)

    On a different litigation topic (‘who pays?’), here is some 9th Circuit language from Bark v. Northrop (Jazz thinning project on the Mt. Hood): “The district court did not abuse its discretion by awarding costs to the Forest Service because its determination that Bark would not be burdened by an award of $2,148.57 when it has an operating budget of $574,421 was not “illogical, implausible, or without support in inferences that may be drawn from the facts in the record.” United States v. Hinkson, 585 F.3d 1247, 1267 (9th Cir. 2009) (en banc).” The district court opinion probably has more details about what was going on here.

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