Opinion ID: 202766
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: GNAPs II and the Injunction Pending Appeal

Text: 9 GNAPs next sought an injunction pending appeal, first from the district court, and then from this court, in order to prevent Verizon from terminating service. See id. at 68 n. 8. GNAPs represented to both courts that without such an injunction it would suffer a fatal revenue loss, and in its motion to this court it characterized the litigation as an all-or-nothing dispute. GNAPs also represented that it had offered to pay Verizon, over time, the more than $56 million Verizon claimed was now due, which GNAPs asserted would fully pay the access charges, if Verizon prevails here. That offer, according to GNAPs, required only that Verizon agree to refrain from cutting off service, and agree to return the sums paid if GNAPs prevailed on appeal. 10 The district court denied GNAPs' request for additional injunctive relief. But this court granted GNAPs' motion on November 2, 2005, and we enjoined Verizon from terminating service pending GNAPs' appeal. This injunction was contingent on GNAPs providing additional security in an amount to be set by the district court, and we remanded the issue of the amount and form of the security. In the district court, GNAPs proposed that the court set security — beyond the $1 million GNAPs had already posted as security for the first injunction — in the amount of $16,676,313. GNAPs further stated that it would post that amount by assigning funds that Verizon's affiliates, most of which operated in other states and were not parties to the underlying suit, had withheld from GNAPs or its affiliates to secure debts in what Verizon claims are unrelated disputes. Not coincidentally, those withheld funds totaled $16,676,313. 11 The district court ordered GNAPs to post an additional $15 million in security. This was roughly $1.7 million less than the $16,676,313 in additional security that GNAPs had itself proposed as appropriate. Over Verizon's objection, the district court also permitted GNAPs to satisfy that requirement by assigning funds withheld by Verizon's affiliates. 12 On April 11, 2006, this court issued its ruling on the merits in GNAPs II, and we affirmed the district court's grant of summary judgment. See id. at 61. This court rejected GNAPs' claim that the Federal Communications Commission, in a decision known as the  ISP Remand Order,  had altered the preexisting intercarrier payment rules for all calls delivered to ISPs. We instead agreed with Verizon that the ISP Remand Order preempted state-imposed payment rules only for calls where the caller and the ISP are located in the same local calling area. See id. at 71-75. 13