Court Opinion

ID: 9521890
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 02:14:39.581293+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:01:24.646365
License: Public Domain

JORDAN, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
I agree that we must affirm the district court’s denial of the motion to intervene because Ali and Alisha Abdur-Rahman did not contest, in their initial brief, the district court’s ruling that their motion was untimely. And I also agree that, as a result, we must dismiss the challenge to the underlying consent decree. I therefore join the Court’s opinion in full.
There are, however, troubling indications that the lawsuit filed by Richard Lindsey against Fayette County was the product of collusion. First, several days before the lawsuit was filed, Steve Brown — a Fayette County Commissioner — asked the Attorney General of Georgia for an opinion as to whether the County could “sue itself’ through a “pre-arranged agreement” in which it would “pay[ ] the expenses of a [third] party to file litigation” against the County. Second, two Fayette County officials-Commissioner *750Brown and Commissioner Robert Hur-gan — testified under oath (at their depositions in a related case) that Scott Bennett, the Fayetteville County Attorney, told them that he had asked Mr. Lindsey to file the lawsuit against the County in order to get the February 2012 redistricting plan approved. Third, emails between Mr. Lindsey and Mr. Bennett appear to confirm that Mr. Bennett (counsel for the would-be-defendants) drafted the complaint for Mr. Lindsey (the would-be-plaintiff) to file against his clients, and that both men then worked together to finalize the document before it was filed in court. Fourth, less than two weeks after the lawsuit was filed, Mr. Lindsey and the County filed a joint motion for approval of a consent decree.
Mr. Lindsey, in a letter he sent to counsel for the Abdur-Rahmans, denied that there was any collusion. But if it is true that the lawsuit was collusive, then the district court lacked Article III jurisdiction to entertain it, see generally United States v. Johnson, 319 U.S. 302, 304-05, 63 S.Ct. 1075, 87 L.Ed. 1413 (1943), and Mr. Lindsey and Mr. Bennett may have improperly manufactured (without the district court’s knowledge) a case or controversy. In my opinion, the district court should inquire further into how this lawsuit came to be filed and settled.