West Coast Seafood Processors Assoc. et al. v. Natural Res. Def. Council, Inc., et al., No. 09-16245 (9th Cir. 2011)
Annotate this CaseWest Coast Seafood Processors Association (WCSPA) appealed from the district court's denial of its motion to intervene as a defendant in this case, in which the NRDC challenged the National Marine Fisheries Service's (NMFS) program to preserve groundfish species off the coast of California, Oregon, and Washington. The Magistrate Judge denied the motion as untimely because of the age of the litigation where WCSPA sought to intervene when the case was already eight years old. While that appeal was pending, however, the underlying litigation -the dispute between NRDC and NMFS- fully ran its course. At issue was whether WCSPA could appeal the denial of its motion to intervene when the district court had entered final judgment on the underlying lawsuit. The court held that the WCSPA's appeal was moot where it was not reasonable to expect that the dispute about timeliness would arise again and where the intervention controversy did not evade review because the intervention dispute was not "inherently limited in duration" nor "likely always to become moot." Accordingly, the appeals were moot and no exceptions to mootness could revive them.
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