Groups urge court not to make lawyer pay Snowbowl

FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (AP) – Tribal groups and conservationists were joined by law professors and consumer advocate Ralph Nader in asking a federal appeals court not to make a lawyer who sued Arizona Snowbowl pay some of the resort’s legal costs.

Snowbowl’s owners asked the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to make lawyer Howard Shanker pay its costs involving the failed effort to block snowmaking at the Flagstaff-area resort, and the court agreed.

But Shanker and the outside groups are asking the court to reconsider, saying such an order would make lawyers who do such work for free less likely to take up contentious issues.

Shanker sued for tribes and conservationists but lost in U.S. District Court and in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear his appeal in 2009.

Shanker then sued again on behalf of the Save the Peaks Coalition, saying the Forest Service didn’t fully consider health risks from eating snow made from reclaimed wastewater.

A 9th Circuit panel in February called the second suit a gross abuse of the judicial process and ordered Shanker to pay Snowbowl’s costs, except legal fees. Snowbowl’s lawyers put the amount at about $32,000.

In legal briefs, Shanker wrote that he “neither knowingly nor recklessly raised a frivolous argument.”

Arizona State University law and ethics professor Gary Marchant joined Nader and others in a friend of the court brief the court formally accepted last week. He told the Arizona Daily Sun (http://bit.ly/Ol7pkz) the court should take another look at making Shanker pay.

“If you act as a reasonable and responsible attorney and the judges don’t like your case, you can get hammered,” Marchant said.

Marchant takes no position on snowmaking at Snowbowl. But he said the case itself had important legal questions yet to be resolved, and that Shanker had done nothing wrong in bringing them.

“It seems like a completely reasonable and appropriate thing to do,” he said.

Supporters of Shanker, including the Native American Rights Fund, wrote to the court asking that the case be heard again by a bigger group of judges.

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Information from: Arizona Daily Sun, http://www.azdailysun.com/