{"id":10138,"date":"2017-12-30T23:53:14","date_gmt":"2017-12-30T23:53:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.environment-hawaii.org\/?p=10138"},"modified":"2018-06-06T22:04:01","modified_gmt":"2018-06-06T22:04:01","slug":"aquarium-industry-group-loses-effort-to-stay-fishery-injunction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/?p=10138","title":{"rendered":"Aquarium Industry Group Loses Effort to Stay Fishery Injunction"},"content":{"rendered":"
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On December 4, 1st Circuit Judge Jeffrey Crabtree denied a motion by the Pet Industry Joint Advisory Council (PIJAC) seeking a stay of his October 27 order halting the collection of marine life for the aquarium trade until an environmental assessment or impact statement is conducted.<\/p>\n

In a November 8 motion, attorneys for PIJAC claimed that Crabtree\u2019s order \u2014 which merely implemented an earlier ruling by the state Supreme Court that all commercial aquarium collection permits issued by the Department of Land and Natural Resources were illegal and invalid \u2014 \u201ccaused, and is causing, devastating harm to participants in Hawai\u2018i\u2019s commercial aquarium fishery.\u201d<\/p>\n

O\u2018ahu resident John Fernley\u2019s aquarium fish store, for example, is 40 to 50 percent dependent on locally sourced Hawaiian saltwater fish collected by five local divers, \u201cnone of whom can fish after the Court\u2019s October 27 ruling,\u201d the motion stated.<\/p>\n

\u201cWithout these fish, Mr. Fernley says he will \u2018be out of business and will have to lay off [his 12] employees.\u2019 As he says, \u2018closing my business of over 40 years would cause immense hardship for not only me and my family, but also my employees and their families, as well.\u2019 Given the length of time Mr. Fernley has been in the tropical fish business and his advanced age, he would likely be unable to find another job. It is virtually inevitable that he will lose his business and, therefore, his home as a result of the court\u2019s October ruling,\u201d it stated.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Kailua-Kona aquarium collector James Lovell, \u201ca single father with a teenage daughter and another child who is in college, … will be unable to pay his bills, including his mortgage. He will be forced to sell his aquarium collection equipment and deplete his savings, making it nearly impossible for him to start over after the Hawai\u2018i Environmental Policy Act review is complete,\u201d the motion continued, adding that hundreds of others in the aquarium fish trade will \u201csuffer very real and very acute harm.\u201d<\/p>\n

The group\u2019s attorneys argued that the aquarium collection permits, good for one year, issued by the DLNR\u2019s Division of Aquatic Resources conveyed constitutionally protected property rights and that any decision to not renew them would require cause and a hearing. Crabtree\u2019s order preventing any permit renewal, therefore, violated the U.S. Constitution, they argued.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo due process has been afforded here, and no just compensation has been offered or provided. Thus, regardless of what the court, plaintiffs, and even the Supreme Court may believe state law requires, federal law explicitly prohibits actions required by the court\u2019s October 27 order. Under the Supremacy Clause of the United States Constitution, federal law must prevail,\u201d the motion stated (emphasis in original).<\/p>\n

Should Judge Crabtree decide not to grant a stay, PIJAC asked that he allow the group to appeal directly to the Hawai\u2018i Supreme Court.<\/p>\n

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In their memorandum in opposition to the motion, attorneys with Earthjustice, representing plaintiff Rene Umberger and others, argued that PIJAC\u2019s members have \u201cno property interest in voided permits, no property right in public trust resources, and therefore were not entitled to due process prior to the injunction.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAquarium fish collection permits … are discretionary permits, which means the state could deny issuance or renewal at any time,\u201d they added.<\/p>\n

Any harm to PIJAC\u2019s members\u2019 financial interests are not irreparable and the public has long suffered due to the commercial capture of fish and other wildlife \u201cin unlimited numbers,\u201d they continued.<\/p>\n

\u201cPIJAC does not, and cannot, articulate how allowing a small group of individuals to continue to illegally extract public reef resources in unlimited numbers, for private profit, serves the public interest. … The industry can bear \u2014 indeed, it owes it to the public to bear \u2014 temporary economic inconveniences for the next several months while DLNR and commercial collectors complete the environmental review they refused to complete earlier,\u201d they wrote.<\/p>\n

After hearing oral arguments on December 4, the judge denied PIJAC\u2019s motion, noting that the court\u2019s October 27 order is merely \u201cimplementing what the Hawai\u2018i Supreme Court already ruled,\u201d hearing minutes state.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is nothing that this court is aware of in the rules of interlocutory appeals that permits the trial court to send this issue back to the Hawai\u2018i Supreme Court when the trial court implements exactly what the Hawai\u2018i Supreme Court ordered the trial court to do, and finds no support to send this case back to the Hawai\u2018i Supreme Court at this time,\u201d the minutes state.<\/p>\n

Crabtree also found that PIJAC was not likely to prevail in its arguments that due process had been violated.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On December 4, 1st Circuit Judge Jeffrey Crabtree denied a motion by the Pet Industry Joint Advisory Council (PIJAC) seeking a stay of his October 27 order halting the collection of marine life for the aquarium trade until an environmental … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9994,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[432],"tags":[3],"class_list":["post-10138","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-january-2018","tag-teresa-dawson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10138","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10138"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10138\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9994"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}