Driftless Area Land Conservancy v. Huebseh

Dist. Ct. erred in denying motion to intervene filed by two holders of permit to build $500 million electricity transmission line in lawsuit filed by plaintiffs-two environmental groups seeking to invalidate instant environmental permit issued by defendant-Commission. While Dist. Ct. based its denial of intervention motion on belief that defendant adequately represented intervenors’ interests in lawsuit because defendant and intervenors had same goal of dismissing plaintiffs’ lawsuit, defendant and intervenors had interests that were independent of each other, where intervenors had financial interests in maintaining permit and had obligations to their shareholders, while defendant had only obligation to general public. Moreover, defendant regulated transmission companies like intervenors, but did not advocate for them, and transmission companies cannot be forced to rely entirely on defendant to protect their investments in construction projects. As such, intervenors satisfied prerequisites for intervention under Rule 24(a)(2), where, under lenient default standard, intervenors established that they had interest in property at issue in lawsuit, that defendant’s representation of their interests might be inadequate, and that defendant and intervenors had different interests and different defenses to lawsuit.