United States Ninth Circuit

Sovereign immunity bars plaintiffs--individual landowners and water users of the Westlands Water District--from suing for alleged violations of a water delivery contract; as the contract does not evince a clear intent to make plaintiffs third-party beneficiaries, they are not "a contracting entity" for purposes of 43 U.S.C. section 390uu. The district court's merit-based rulings are vacated.

Appellate Information

• Argued 02/11/2003
• Decided 02/18/2004
• Published 02/18/2004

Judges

• CLIFTON, Circuit Judge:, Before:  NOONAN, THOMAS and CLIFTON, Circuit Judges.

Court

• United States Ninth Circuit

Counsel

• For Appellant:
  
• William M. Smiland (argued) and Theodore A. Chester, Jr., Smiland & Khachigian, Los Angeles, CA, for plaintiffs-appellants Francis A. Orff, et al., Janet K. Goldsmith, William T. Chisum and J. Port Telles, Kronick, Moskovitz, Tiedemann & Girard, Sacramento, CA;  and Stuart L. Somach (argued), Somach Simmons & Dunn, Sacramento, CA, for plaintiff-intervenor-appellant Westlands Water District.


• For Appellees:
  
• Maria A. Iizuka and Todd S. Aagaard (argued), Department of Justice, Washington, D.C., for defendants-appellees United States of America, et al., Hamilton Candee and Michael E. Wall (argued), Natural Resources Defense Council, San Francisco, CA;  and Philip F. Atkins-Pattenson, Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton, LLP, San Francisco, CA, for defendants-intervenors-appellees Natural Resources Defense Council, et al.