Civil Procedure — mootness

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United States Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit

Civil

Civil Procedure — mootness

A municipal land use case cannot come within the exception to the doctrine of mootness for cases that are capable of repetition yet elude review.

“[T]he fact that a dissolved injunction may have consequences even though the case in which it was issued is now moot is not a permissible ground for invoking the doctrine that allows the appeal of moot cases that are capable of repetition but evade review. It is true that when the timing of a project, whether it is a real estate development, a merger, the licensing of a patent, or the unveiling of a new product, is critical, an injunction, though immediately appealable, may kill the project before the appellate court can act. But to allow this as a ground for permitting moot cases to be appealed would bring an unmanageable host of such cases into the appellate courts. A court would have to wrestle in every case with uncertain questions about whether an injunction that had not been appealed had had or would have a future impact that should justify allowing an appeal even though it had become moot. The City admits that it has found no precedent for so broad and vaguely bounded an exception to the rule of the nonappealability of moot cases.”

Dismissed.

11-3811 Wirtz v. City of South Bend

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Indiana, Miller, J., Posner, J.