5.4. SR 05-17-2010 - Laserfiche WebLink

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City now wants to use these separate proceedings to suggest that the ERL I appeal must proceed prematurely. In truth, City wants the ERL I appeal to go first because it has literally no defense for its CUP/license amendment denial in ERL II other than what was rejected by the district court's 4/2/10 Order. 4/28/10 City Opp. Br. at 9 ("the district court is destined to issue a ruling overturning the City's permitting and licensing decision"). More critically, City wants to proceed with its ERL I appeal prematurely so that it can at least try to decouple for this Court's review the district court's declaratory judgment ruling from its breach of contract ruling. City's thinly-veiled basis for doing so is its claim that the district court's declaratory judgment ruling is final and appealable while the district court's breach of contract ruling is not final and thus not appealable. Id. at 11 ("rather than having an administrative panel decide whether the interests of justice require consideration of the district court's contract-related analysis, that question should be left for the panel hearing the merits to decide in the first instance"). But these two claims cannot be so simplistically separated. Rather they are in the district court's 4/2/10 Order implicitly and explicitly intertwined. Implicitly, because the district court "conclu[ded]" that City's "reasons to deny" ERL's requested expansion of the SWF Overlay District were "without a rational basis" and "order[ed]" that ERL "is entitled to proceed with its proposed landfill expansion" (4/2/10 Order at 21 and 32 ¶ 3), City clearly failed to comply with its judicially-determined "cooperat[ion]" obligation. Indeed, rather than even try to argue that it complied with its judicially-determined "cooperat[ion]" obligation within the 2003 HCA, City instead unsuccessfully argued to the district court that the "cooperat[ion]" 13