ELR Citation: ELR 20073
No(s). 03-35579 (9th Cir. Apr 5, 2005)

The Fifth Circuit held that when a party withdraws one of its claims before the trial court enters judgment and the action is subsequently dismissed on the merits, the trial court's failure to indicate that the withdrawn claim was dismissed without prejudice does not render its decision a "final judgment on the merits" as to that claim. An environmental group first filed suit against the U.S. Forest Service under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and the Wilderness Act after the Forest Service relocated a 1.5-mile stretch of a man-made motorized path in the Hells Canyon Wilderness. The group withdrew its Wilderness Act claim, and a district court dismissed the remaining NEPA claim as moot. The group later filed suit against the Forest Service under the Wilderness Act because parts of the trail were still located within the wilderness area. The court dismissed the case on res judicata grounds. But because the first case contained no Wilderness Act cause of action at the time of dismissal, there was no final judgment on the merits with regard to that claim. In addition, the court's final judgment on the merits with regard to the group's NEPA claim in the first case does not bar its Wilderness Act claims in the instant case. The Wilderness Act claim arises out of a different "transactional nucleus of facts" than the group's NEPA claim.

[A prior case in this decision is published at 25 ELR 21373.]