Court Opinion

ID: 9459463
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 21:21:13.870516+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:36:10.386995
License: Public Domain

CHAMBERS, Circuit Judge
(dissenting from the refusal of the court to take the case en banc).
Springer is operating some kind of a health spa on mining claims on government land.
This involves several buildings built on the claims and the use of some spring water claimed to contain health-giving minerals. It is not contended the business is an unlawful one.
What the panel has done is to approve the granting of a temporary injunction where no final judgment or decree has been entered. No threatened irreparable injury was ever proved. Certainly by final judgment a landowner is entitled to have one adjudged to be on the land improperly and is entitled to have the defendant put off by mandatory injunction, but not now.
What we do is to approve the practice of giving the government “two bites at the cherry,” — one is on preliminary in*47junction and the second is on trial on the merits.
There was no balance of convenience here in favor of government. Any damage done was when the establishment was erected. It is not suggested that any real damage has been done since then.
Although the case is not mentioned, the panel has quietly overruled such cases as McCarthy v. Bunker Hill and Sullivan Mining and Concentrating Company, 164 F. 927 (9th Cir. 1908), a case that has stood for 65 years. There, mines were polluting the Coeur d’Alene River. On a temporary injunction request, this court said “no.” Comparatively the damage in the McCarthy case was horrendous. Here, no present damage is shown.
It is very troublesome that the panel opinion refers to the fact that Springer has been convicted of a number of offenses. I thought the day was long past when we forfeited a man’s legal rights because he had been previously convicted of a crime or crimes.