(Written by kencraw)

For those not daily visiting the SAHPC court case page, there’s been a ton of activity. I summarized the current state of things as of this morning in an article just published at BearTerritory.net:

http://cal.rivals.com/content.asp?CID=840372

But even since this morning there has been fresh activity. The University submitted a proposed Judgment for Judge Miller to look over. Their hope of course is that Judge Miller just rubber stamps it.

The key development here is that the University is pushing REALLY hard to get these trees down before the MSU game. Their strategy now is to ask Judge Miller to immediately end the injunction with the knowlege that the University has promised not to cut any trees down for two days after the decision giving Volker and Co. two days to file an appeal and attempt to get an appellate injunction in place. By ending the injunction immediately, the whole 20-day extension for appeal is no longer relevant (how can an injunction that doesn’t exist get “extended”).

So in theory, if Judge Miller rubber stamps the University’s proposed Judgment, Fan Appreciation day on Saturday may be a LOT more exciting than we had previously thought, what with the screaming tree-sitters and the chainsaws echoing in Strawberry Canyon.

There is one thing I’m concerned with in the University’s strategy: Judges don’t like to be rushed. I’m not concerned with Judge Miller… she’s so sick of this case she can’t wait to get it off her desk. But the appellate judge is a different matter. If the University does indeed get the injunction lifted with only two days for Volker and Co. to get a new injunction in place from an appellate judge, I can easily see that judge being more likely to issue an injunction because of the shortness of time they get to consider it.

Said another way, if there were 24 days left in the injunction when the appellate judge first gets the case, that gives them plenty of time to think over what to do. They can read a bunch of the rulings and briefs and various submissions from both sides and get a good sense of things without ever having to make any decisions for a number of weeks. Once they’ve done that, they can then decide with confidence that there is nothing here that merits an injunction and deny that request with plenty of time to spare.

If, however, this judge has all of two days to make that decision, they’re going to feel VERY rushed. Many judges will be tempted to put on the brakes at this point so that they can take a more thorough look at the case. The way they do that is by instituting a temporary injunction. And once we’ve opened that pandora’s box at the appellate level, it’s going to be more difficult to get that injunction removed before the entire appellate process is completed.

So, is it worth that risk to potentially move up the tree cutting by 4 weeks? Maybe. Only time will tell.