Court Opinion

ID: 9569886
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 20:18:19.408186+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:04:12.961306
License: Public Domain

KLEINFELD, J.,
concurring in part and dissenting in part:
I concur in all parts of the majority opinion except the portion regarding the award of attorneys’ fees on the Endangered Species Act claims. Because I *918would vacate the award of attorneys’ fees on those claims, I respectfully dissent.
The Center is not a “prevailing party” because we are vacating the judgment on the Endangered Species Act claims, which is the basis for the fee award. Since the Center is no longer a prevailing party, we should also vacate the award of attorneys’ fees. This is the appropriate course under the Supreme Court’s decision in Lewis v. Continental Bank Corp.1 As the Court explained in Lewis, the “ordinary practice in disposing of a case that has become moot on appeal is to vacate the judgment with directions to dismiss.”2 The effect of an order vacating a judgment on mootness grounds is to “deprive [the plaintiff] of its claim for attorney’s fees ... because such fees are available only to a party that ‘prevails’ by winning the relief it seeks.”3 The Court did not follow this ordinary practice in Lewis only because it remanded for further proceedings, having concluded that the plaintiff might have “some residual claim” under the new statutory framework.4
In our case, the de-listing of the bald eagle has not left any “residual claims” that the Center could assert on remand. Accordingly, this case is controlled by the “ordinary practice” in Lewis for disposing of cases that have become moot on appeal, which is to vacate the judgment with directions to dismiss.5 Under Lewis, we should vacate the fee award because there is then no longer a valid judgment in favor of the Center.
It is true that until the date of de-listing, first the preliminary injunction, and then the permanent injunction, temporarily gave the Center the relief it sought. Under the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Sole v. Wyner, this temporary victory does not make the Center a “prevailing party.”6 “Prevailing party status, we hold, does not attend achievement of a preliminary injunction that is reversed, dissolved, or otherwise undone by the final decision in the same case.”7 The Court rejected the district court’s method of analyzing the plaintiffs success in “phases,” instead emphasizing that the plaintiff “had gained no enduring ‘chang[e] [in] the legal relationship’ between herself and the state officials she sued.”8
Here, it does not matter that the Center temporarily “prevailed” during earlier phases of the litigation, because the Center has not obtained any permanent relief. We are dissolving the permanent injunction, and the preliminary injunction’s effect is “otherwise undone” by our decision in this case, which will allow Marina Point to proceed.9 A “prevailing party” must se*919cure a “judicially sanctioned change in the legal relationship between the parties.”10 Here, there is no enforceable “judgment” because we are vacating it. As in Sole, the “victory” in effect while this appeal was pending is too ephemeral to make the Center a prevailing party.11 It makes no sense to award attorneys’ fees based on a “judgment” that no longer exists (because we are vacating it), and that entitles the party to no legally enforceable relief.
I would distinguish our decision in UFO Chuting of Hawaii, Inc. v. Smith to the extent it contains language suggesting a contrary result.12 Both the facts and the procedural posture of UFO Chuting differ materially from this case. In UFO Chuting, the district court granted plaintiffs a permanent injunction, which barred enforcement of a Hawaii law that the court found to be preempted by federal law.13 After the injunction was in effect, Congress changed the applicable federal law.14 Based on the intervening change in federal law, the district court then stayed the permanent injunction and vacated its prior judgment.15 On appeal, we affirmed the denial of attorneys’ fees to the plaintiffs, not a grant of attorneys’ fees.16 We explained that entry of judgment in a party’s favor “does not automatically render that party a ‘prevailing party’ ” for the purpose of a fee award, because the plaintiff must also show that the judgment “somehow affected the behavior of the defendant towards the plaintiff.”17 We held that the plaintiffs temporary “victory” — securing entry of the permanent injunction — was negated by the subsequent change in the law upon which the plaintiffs claims were based.
In UFO Chuting the district court did not err, and the change in law that mooted out the appeal vindicated the injunction.18 In our case, by contrast, the district court did err, and granted an injunction based on two things, an error in the application of the Clean Water Act, and a judgment about the Endangered Species Act vitiated by the regulatory change. Since UFO Chuting did not cite Sole, I do not think it stands as a Ninth Circuit interpretation of Sole that must be followed.19 In Sole, the plaintiffs actually got what they wanted, to display themselves naked on the beach, they just were denied the right to do it again.20 The Supreme Court said their victory was too “ephemeral” for prevailing party status.21 A fortiori, the victory is too ephemeral here for prevailing party status and attorneys’ fees, because the Center never won what it wanted under the Endangered Species Act. It only got to delay development based on the now-moot Endangered Species Act claims and the *920district court’s error on the Clean Water Act claims.

. 494 U.S. 472, 110 S.Ct. 1249, 108 L.Ed.2d 400 (1990).

. Id. at 482, 110 S.Ct. 1249 (citing Deakins v. Monaghan, 484 U.S. 193, 204, 108 S.Ct. 523, 98 L.Ed.2d 529 (1988); United States v. Munsingwear, Inc., 340 U.S. 36, 39-40, 71 S.Ct. 104, 95 L.Ed. 36 (1950)).

. Id. at 480, 110 S.Ct. 1249 (citing Rhodes v. Stewart, 488 U.S. 1, 109 S.Ct. 202, 102 L.Ed.2d 1 (1988) (per curiam); Hewitt v. Helms, 482 U.S. 755, 107 S.Ct. 2672, 96 L.Ed.2d 654 (1987)).

. Id. at 482-83, 110 S.Ct. 1249.

. Id.; see also Karcher v. May, 484 U.S. 72, 82-83, 108 S.Ct. 388, 98 L.Ed.2d 327 (1987) (holding that vacatur of a judgement is appropriate when review is “prevented through happenstance,” such as when the controversy presented for review has "become moot due to circumstances unattributable to any of the parties”); Munsingwear, 340 U.S. at 40, 71 S.Ct. 104.

. 551 U.S. 74, 127 S.Ct. 2188, 167 L.Ed.2d 1069 (2007).

. Id. at 2195.

. Id. at 2196 (alterations in original).

. See id. at 2195.

. Buckhannon Bd. & Care Home, Inc. v. W. Va. Dep’t of Health & Human Res., 532 U.S. 598, 600, 605, 121 S.Ct. 1835, 149 L.Ed.2d 855 (2001).

. See Sole, 127 S.Ct. at 2196; cf. Rhodes, 488 U.S. at 4, 109 S.Ct. 202.

. 508 F.3d 1189 (9th Cir.2007).

. Id. at 1191.

. Id. at 1191-92.

.Id. at 1192.

. Id. at 1197-98.

. Id. at 1197.

. See id. at 1198.

. Cf. Miller v. Gammie, 335 F.3d 889, 899-900 (9th Cir.2003) (en banc); see also Sentry Select Ins. Co. v. Royal Ins. Co. of Am., 481 F.3d 1208, 1218 (9th Cir.2007).

. 127 S.Ct. at 2193-94.

. Id. at2195.