Civil Procedure — intervention

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United States Court of Appeals

Civil

Civil Procedure — intervention

In a dispute between FEMA and a recipient of FEMA aid, third parties should be allowed to intervene, when the parties contend the third parties are responsible for reimbursing FEMA for disaster aid.

“What is true is that insofar as the airlines want to establish the meaning of the relevant provision of the Use Agreements, they will if allowed to intervene be litigating an original action rather than seeking judicial review of an agency determination; but they don’t want to conduct discovery on that issue. Might the City want to conduct discovery? Conceivably, but it is notable that the City supports the airlines’ motion for intervention and has not bothered to file a brief in this appeal. It may be indifferent between litigating over the contract in the present proceeding and (should it lose) in a separate suit against the airlines. And neither the district judge in denying intervention nor FEMA in opposing it suggested that there might be discovery concerning the meaning of the contract. Most disputes over the meaning of written contracts are resolved on the basis of the language of the contract and the purpose that can be inferred from that language and from the contract’s subject matter, rather than on the basis, or with the aid, of extrinsic evidence. This may be such a case, but maybe not, since the Use Agreements do not contain integration clauses. Still, we have no basis for thinking that it would be as efficient to litigate this three-cornered dispute in two lawsuits rather than one.”

Reversed.

10-3544 City of Chicago v. FEMA

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Norgle, J., Posner, J.