M.J. Farms, Ltd. v. United States Fish & Wildlife Service

593 F. Supp. 2d 907, 2008 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 103652, 2008 WL 5231588
CourtDistrict Court, W.D. Louisiana
DecidedDecember 15, 2008
DocketCivil Action 1:08-cv-1829
StatusPublished
Cited by3 cases

This text of 593 F. Supp. 2d 907 (M.J. Farms, Ltd. v. United States Fish & Wildlife Service) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, W.D. Louisiana primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
M.J. Farms, Ltd. v. United States Fish & Wildlife Service, 593 F. Supp. 2d 907, 2008 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 103652, 2008 WL 5231588 (W.D. La. 2008).

Opinion

RULING

DEE D. DRELL, District Judge.

Before the Court is the Plaintiffs’ Complaint seeking declaratory judgment, an injunction and other equitable relief against the Defendants. We granted an evidentiary hearing to determine the propriety of granting a requested preliminary injunction, as well as to consider the threshold issue of subject matter jurisdiction raised by the Defendants. The hearing was held in open court on December 11, 2008, in Alexandria, Louisiana. Both parties presented witnesses and evidence. For the reasons stated below, after careful review of the evidence presented at the hearing and after consideration of the parties’ memoranda previously filed herein, the Plaintiffs’ request for a preliminary injunction is DENIED. However, because we regard the Plaintiffs’ claims as serious, in no way frivolous, and, in part, of first impression either in concept or as presented, further explanation is necessary.

I. THE BACKGROUND

The Plaintiffs are a hunter and a commercial farming operation that leases portions of its farms annually to hunters. The farms at issue consist of roughly 23,-000 acres near the town of Jonesville, Catahoula Parish, known as the Louisiana Delta Plantation (“the Delta”). Twenty-seven tenant farmers lease varying plots of land on the Delta for the production of crops — cotton, rice, soy beans, corn, and milo, among others. The Delta is also popular with hunters because it is favorably situated for the hunting of migratory waterfowl making their way south for the winter along the Mississippi Flyway, and which are lured no doubt by the prospect of a Holiday Inn Express, a nice place to rest and get a meal. In late August 2008, before duck season began, farmers on the Delta were alerted to a major Atlantic hurricane that had devastated. much of Hispaniola and was headed their way. Accordingly, those whose crops were at a suitable stage of development began harvesting their fields in earnest in an attempt to salvage what would likely be *909 ruined by the storm, by then known as Gustav. Testimony indicated that approximately thirty percent of the crops on the Delta had been brought in by the time the storm’s effects were felt in Louisiana. On September 1, 2008, Hurricane Gustav made its landfall in the United States in Terrebonne Parish, Louisiana and travelled North, causing significant damage to wide areas of the state, including Catahoula Parish. Farmers and farm managers on the Delta testified that large portions of crops had been destroyed or rendered unharvestable as a result of wind or flood damage from Gustav. While an additional thirty percent of the crops were harvested in the weeks after the storm, the remaining forty percent of crops of the Delta’s 23,000 acres were determined to be completely unharvestable because of various causes.

The Delta’s tenant farmers are in yearlong written leases which contain a provision requiring the annual — perhaps twice-annual, depending on the crop — discing of the soil at the conclusion of the harvest in preparation for the next season’s planting. 1 Testimony showed that shredding or discing was also a condition of receiving payments under the tenant farmers’ crop insurance policies (the purchase of which is generally required by the mortgagee of the farmers’ crops). 2 In any event, nearly all of the remaining unharvestable crops were destroyed by shredding and/or discing, ostensibly to qualify the farmers for insurance proceeds and to prepare the fields for the spring planting. However, this process resulted in a greater than usual portion of seeds, beans, or grains on those unharvestable crops being spread upon the ground along with the shredded plant material. In a perfect world, this would not be problematic: but, enter federal wildlife regulations. Federal law strictly prohibits the hunting of migratory waterfowl on land that is determined to be baited or on lands within the “zone of influence” of baited areas. 3 Migratory waterfowl eat seeds, beans, and grains, and are sometimes illegally baited with this fare by the unscrupulous. Although there is clearly NO evidence of unscrupulous or intentional baiting here, federal wildlife agents determined that the field was baited owing to the extra amounts of seed, beans, and grain on various areas of the Delta, and advised both Delta personnel and hunters that they would hunt the Del *910 ta — all 23,000 acres of it falling under an amorphous, yet no less off-limits, “zone of influence” surrounding baited areas — at their own peril. Hunting leases were canceled and the Delta lost hundreds of thousands of dollars as the first phase of the 2008 duck season flew by on the calendar. The Plaintiffs instituted their complaint seeking, among other things, a declaratory judgment, injunctive relief against the enforcement decision of the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, and a Fifth Amendment “taking” claim. The Defendants have, contrarily, moved to dismiss the complaint owing variously to the Defendants’ sovereign immunity, a lack of subject matter jurisdiction over the issue at hand, or out of deference to the executive agency’s discretionary interpretation of its own regulations.

II. JURISDICTIONAL ISSUE AND STANDARD OF REVIEW

“Federal courts are courts of limited jurisdiction. As courts created by statute, they have no jurisdiction absent jurisdiction conferred by statute. Thus, there must be a statutory basis for federal court jurisdiction over [the Plaintiffs’] claims. The party claiming federal subject matter jurisdiction has the burden of proving it exists.” People’s Nat’l Bank v. Office of Comptroller of Currency, 362 F.3d 333, 336 (5th Cir.2004) (citations omitted). The Plaintiffs’ amended complaint asserts that jurisdiction is proper in this Court pursuant to the Administrative Procedure Act (“APA”). 5 U.S.C. §§ 551 et seq. (2006). The APA, which does not independently confer subject matter jurisdiction, is Plaintiffs’ one hope for establishing this Court is a proper forum in this dispute, in that the APA contains an explicit waiver of the sovereign immunity of the United States to be sued. See id. § 702 (2006). However, this waiver permits suit by parties “suffering legal wrong because of agency action,” id., which is elsewhere limited by Congress to mean only “final agency action.” Id. § 704 (emphasis added). Two conditions must be satisfied for an agency action to be considered final: (1) the action must mark the consummation of the agency’s decision-making process; and (2) the action must be one by which rights or obligations have been determined or from which legal consequences will flow. Peoples Nat’l Bank, 362 F.3d at 337. On the other hand, “a non-final agency order is one that ‘does not of itself adversely affect complainant but only affects his rights adversely on the contingency of future administrative action.’ ” Id. (quoting Rochester Tel. Corp. v. United States, 307 U.S. 125, 130, 59 S.Ct. 754, 83 L.Ed. 1147 (1939)).

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Bluebook (online)
593 F. Supp. 2d 907, 2008 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 103652, 2008 WL 5231588, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/mj-farms-ltd-v-united-states-fish-wildlife-service-lawd-2008.