United States Ninth Circuit

District court decision reversed and remanded to bankruptcy court for further proceedings for a determination of whether the laws proponents propose to preempt in their plan come within the express preemption of the "notwithstanding" clause of sections 1123(a) and 1142(a).

Appellate Information

• Argued 05/14/2003
• Decided 11/19/2003
• Published 11/19/2003

Judges

• Before:  HAWKINS, W. FLETCHER, Circuit Judges, and KING, Senior Judge.

Court

• United States Ninth Circuit

Counsel

• For Appellant:
  
• Robert D. McCallum, Jr., Assistant Attorney General, Kevin V. Ryan, United States Attorney, William Kanter, Jeffrey Clair (argued), U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Division, Appellate Staff, Washington, DC, Jonathan V. Holtzman, Renne & Holtzman, San Francisco, CA;  Mary H. Williams, State of Oregon Justice Department, Salem, Oregon, for amici curiae.


• For Appellees:
  
• James L. Lopes,Amy E. Margolin, Howard, Rice, Nemerovski, Canady, Falk and Rabkin, Stephen L. Johnson, United States Department of Justice, San Francisco, CA;  Laurence H. Tribe, Harvard University Law School, Cambridge, MA;  Michael Kessler, Weil, Gotshall and Manges, New York, NY;  Alan Shore Gover, Dewey Ballantine, Houston, TX, for plaintiff-appellee/respondent Pacific Gas and Electric., Thomas Greene, Margarita Padilla, Office of the Attorney General, Oakland, CA;  Steven H. Felderstein, Paul J. Pascuzzi, Felderstein Fitzgerald Willoughby, Sacramento, CA;  Bruce A. Behrens, California Department of Transportation, Theresa L. Mueller, D. Cameron Baker, San Francisco City Attorney's Office, Arocles Aguilar, Gary M. Cohen, Public Utilities Commission of the State of California, San Francisco, CA;  Richard Roos-Collins, Natural Heritage Institute, Berkeley, CA;  Charlton H. Bonham, Trout Unlimited, Albany, CA;  Alan W. Kornberg and Walter Rieman, Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, New York, NY, for defendants-appellants/petitioners State of California, et al.