Commonwealth, Energy & Env’t Cabinet v. Circuit Court (Shepherd)

Citizen Plaintiffs gave notice of their intent to sue Frasure Creek Mining and another coal mining company pursuant to the citizen suit provision of the Clean Water Act. At the close of the statutory sixty-day notice period, the state Energy and Environment Cabinet brought an enforcement action against Frasure Creek and thus invoked the statutory bar to Plaintiffs' suit. Together with its complaint, the Cabinet filed a proposed consent judgment. The trial court subsequently granted Plaintiffs' motion to intervene to allow Plaintiffs an opportunity to voice their objections to the proposed consent judgment. The Cabinet and Frasure Creek sought extraordinary relief against the circuit court, petitioning the court of appeals for writs forbidding the intervention and compelling entry of the consent judgment. They argued that the trial court's intervention order ran counter both to jurisdictional limits imposed by Congress and to state law rules and standards for granting intervention and approving consent judgments. The court of appeals denied the petition. The Supreme Court affirmed, holding that the trial court was proceeding within its jurisdiction and that the Cabinet and Frasure Creek had an adequate remedy by appeal for the errors they alleged. View "Commonwealth, Energy & Env't Cabinet v. Circuit Court (Shepherd)" on Justia Law