Knaust v. City of Kingston

• Decision Date: 04 September 1998
• Citation: 157 F.3d 86
• Parties: Mark KNAUST, Barbara Knaust and Herman Karl Knaust, II, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. THE CITY OF KINGSTON, New York, The City of Kingston Planning Board, The City of Kingston Local Development Corporation and The United States Department of Commerce, for and through the Economic Development Administration, Wilbur F. Hawkins, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Economic Development, Defendants-Appellees. Docket 97-6287.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Second Circuit

Page 86

157 F.3d 86

Mark KNAUST, Barbara Knaust and Herman Karl Knaust, II Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. THE CITY OF KINGSTON, New York, The City of Kingston Planning Board, The City of Kingston Local Development Corporation and The United States Department of Commerce for and through the Economic Development Administration Wilbur F. Hawkins, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Economic Development, Defendants-Appellees.

Docket 97-6287.

United States Court of Appeals Second Circuit.

Argued May 13, 1998.

Decided Sept. 4, 1998.

John J. Privitera, McNamee, Lochner, Titus & Williams, Albany, New York, for Plaintiffs-Appellants.

Michael J. Moore, Ward, Sommer & Moore, LLC, Albany, New York (Richard Riseley, Dean S. Sommer and Deborah L. Jones, Ward, Sommer & Moore, LLC, Albany, New York, on the brief), for Defendants-Appellees The City of Kingston, City of Kingston Planning Board and City of Kingston Local Development Corporation.

Russell W. Craig, Special Assistant United States Attorney, Washington, DC (Thomas Maroney, United States Attorney for the Northern District of New York, Albany, New

York), for Defendant-Appellee United States Department of Commerce.

Before: FEINBERG and WALKER, Circuit Judges, and SHADUR, ^* Senior District Judge.

SHADUR, Senior District Judge.

Mark Knaust, Barbara Knaust and Herman Karl Knaust, II (collectively "Knausts") have taken an interlocutory appeal from the October 10, 1997 order of the United States District Court for the Northern District of New York (Frederick J. Scullin, Jr., District Judge ) that (1) denied Knausts' motion for a preliminary injunction, (2) denied Knausts' Fed.R.Civ.P. ("Rule") 56 motion for summary judgment on certain of their claims against the United States Department of Commerce ("Department") and (3) granted Department's cross-motion for summary judgment, dismissing all of Knausts' claims against Department. For the reasons set forth below, we dismiss the appeal as moot and vacate the district court's order.

Background Facts

On September 20, 1995 the Economic Development Administration, a Department agency, approved a $1,860,000 grant under the Public Works and Economic Development Act of 1965 as amended (42 U.S.C. §§ 3121-3137) to the City of Kingston, its Planning Board and its Local Development Corporation (collectively "Kingston Defendants") to provide partial funding for the construction of the Kingston Business Park ("Park") on a 107 acre parcel of property adjacent to and topographically above Knausts' property. Knausts opposed the project, arguing that it posed an imminent threat to the environment. More specifically, they maintained that Park's storm water system would contaminate a subterranean water source on their property and would thus interfere with their professed plans to revive an abandoned commercial mushroom farm operated on the property 30 years earlier.

On April 15, 1996 Knausts filed their Complaint that (1) charged Department with violations of the National Environmental Policy Act ("NEPA," 42 U.S.C. §§ 4321-4370e) and the Coastal Zone Management Act (16 U.S.C. §§ 1451-1465), (2) asserted claims against Kingston Defendants for their alleged violations of 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and of New York environmental law and (3) advanced common law nuisance claims against all defendants. Knausts also sought temporary and preliminary injunctive relief to enjoin the federal funding and the Park's construction. One month later the district court denied Knausts' request for a temporary restraining order, leaving the request for preliminary injunctive relief still pending.

Next Knausts moved for summary judgment and a permanent injunction on their NEPA claim against Department, which in turn responded with its own Rule 56 motion seeking to dismiss all of the claims pending against it. During the 15 months that elapsed between those filings and their disposition, the construction of Park's infrastructure was completed and all federal funds allocated to the project were disbursed and expended.

On October 10, 1997 the district court entered the order described at the outset of this opinion, and this appeal ensued. Shortly before we heard oral argument Department and Kingston Defendants moved to dismiss the appeal on mootness grounds. Those motions were fully briefed and were consolidated with Knausts' interlocutory appeal.

Mootness

As a threshold jurisdictional matter, we must decide whether intervening events have rendered Knausts' request for injunctive relief moot, for "Article III of the Constitution limits this Court to consideration of appeals involving a live case or controversy" (Agee v. Paramount Communications Inc., 114 F.3d 395, 398 (2d Cir.1997)). As Lewis v. Continental Bank Corp., 494 U.S. 472, 477-78, 110 S.Ct. 1249, 108 L.Ed.2d 400 (1990) (internal citations and quotation marks omitted) makes clear:

This case-or-controversy requirement subsists through all stages of federal judicial proceedings, trial and appellate. To sustain our jurisdiction in the present case, it is not enough that a dispute was very much alive when suit was filed.... The parties must continue to have a personal stake in the outcome of the lawsuit.

It cannot be gainsaid that the preliminary injunction aspect of the case--the springboard for and sole subject of this appeal--no longer presents a live controversy and is therefore moot. As we said in Bank of New York Co. v. Northeast Bancorp, Inc., 9 F.3d 1065, 1067 (2d Cir.1993):

In general, an appeal from the denial of a preliminary injunction is mooted by the occurrence of the action sought to be enjoined. ¹

Accord, Neighborhood Transp. Network, Inc. v. Pena, 42 F.3d 1169, 1172 (8th Cir.1994). That certainly is the case here: Park's construction was finished in July 1997, the final disbursement of the federal funds was made in September of that year, and there are no pending applications for additional federal financing. Because this appeal thus seeks to enjoin the future occurrence of events that are already in the past, we lack appellate jurisdiction.

Our conclusion is strongly buttressed by CMM Cable Rep., Inc. v. Ocean Coast Properties, Inc., 48 F.3d 618, 621 (1st Cir.1995), which confronted a similar factual scenario and also dismissed the appeal, stating in language that might well have been written for this case:

No mandate that we might issue can turn back the pages of the calendar and either stop the commission of the allegedly infringing act or fully palliate its effects. Though federal courts possess great authority, they lack the power, once a bell has been rung, to unring it. In short, no justiciable controversy exists because this appeal can no longer serve the intended harm-preventing function, or, put another way, this court, within the isthmian confines of an interlocutory appeal from an order refusing to restrain a now completed act, has no effective relief to offer.

There are to be sure situations in which otherwise moot cases may nevertheless remain justiciable if they are "capable of repetition, yet evading review" (Southern Pac. Terminal Co. v. ICC, 219 U.S. 498, 515, 31 S.Ct. 279, 55 L.Ed. 310 (1911)). But that long-recognized exception to mootness principles is severely circumscribed. As Spencer v. Kemna, --- U.S. ----, ----, 118 S.Ct. 978, 988, 140 L.Ed.2d 43 (1998) (internal citations, quotation marks and brackets omitted) has reconfirmed earlier this year:

The capable-of-repetition doctrine applies only in exceptional situations, where the following two circumstances are simultaneously present: (1) the challenged action is in its duration too short to be fully litigated prior to cessation or expiration, and (2) there is a reasonable expectation that the...