9th Circuit - Mandates - Remand - Authority of Lower Court - Stay I once had a dog that was quite an excitable creature. No matter what I did my command to stay seemed to fall on deaf ears. Somewhat akin to me and the dog, the 9th Circuit and the District Court got into a bit of a tussle over whether the District Court could stay a proceeding. In the case, the 9th Circuit had decided the matter and remanded the case for trial to the lower court. The parties agreed to ask for a stay while the City sought certiorari to the Supreme Court from the mandate. The District Court determined that it could not issue a stay as that would violate the mandate. On appeal, the panel concluded that it could not stay the mandate but that the lower court could stay the proceedings as requested. Chinaryan vs. City of Los Angeles, 21-56237.pdf<https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2024/12/04/21-56237.pdf> Rant: Seriously, the parties are put through this back and forth when you'd think a phone call or two might have resolved things. Maybe the DOGE group could look at the cost to parties and taxpayers of the inefficiency of the court system. As a follow up to this sort of nonsense, read on: 4th Circuit- State Law Claiims In this case the panel of the 4th Circuit slaps down a lower court judge for the temerity to ignore its mandate; The opinion starts: "We deal here with the unfortunate instance of a district court failing to follow our clear mandate to dismiss the state law claims against the school officials in this case. We again reverse the judgment and reiterate what we said in the prior appeal-that the state law claims were not remanded for further proceedings but were instead to be dismissed. No exceptions to the mandate rule applied, and their invocation here would risk allowing the exceptions to swallow the rule." R.A. vs. McClenahan, 241008.P.pdf<https://www.ca4.uscourts.gov/opinions/241008.P.pdf> Final thought - SIGN UP FOR 2025 KITCHEN SINK WEBINAR PROGRAM - NOW PLEASE. www.imla.org Charles W. Thompson, Jr. Of Counsel P: (202) 466-5424 x7110 M: (240) 876-6790 D: (202) 742-1016 [facebook icon]<https://www.facebook.com/InternationalMunicipalLawyersAssociation/>[twitter icon]<https://twitter.com/imlalegal>[linkedin icon]<https://www.linkedin.com/company/international-municipal-lawyers-association-inc./> [logo]<https://imla.org/> 51 Monroe St. Suite 404 Rockville, MD, 20850 www.imla.org<http://www.imla.org/>