Litigation Procedure Standing. The court agreed with the federal defendants that Thompson lacked standing, because the company’s interests in the case were purely economic. “Thompson does not assert or proffer any evidence establishing that it has any environmental interest in the CRC Project…. “Thompson only has a pecuniary interest and does not have any interest in the local environment. The Ninth Circuit has repeatedly made clear that a plaintiff such as Thompson, which asserts only ‘purely economic injuries, does not have standing to challenge an agency action under NEPA.’” The court also considered Thompson’s argument that economic interests were sufficient to establish standing for a NEPA claim, because the CEQ regulations require an EIS to discuss social, natural, and physical effects as well as economic effects when they are all “interrelated”. The court rejected this argument because it found no support for it in case law. The court also acknowledged that the EIS itself discussed navigational impacts on river users such as Thompson, and still found that Thompson did not have standing to challenge the EIS’s consideration of those issues: “Simply because the FEIS and ROD discuss various impacts to users of the environment—in this case, river users—does not necessarily give those users prudential standing or bring their purely economic interests within NEPA’s zone of interest.”

Statute of Limitations. Another company, Greenberry Industrial LLC, filed a separate lawsuit challenging the EIS based on the same concerns as Thompson. Greenberry filed its lawsuit after the statute-of-limitations period had ended, but argued that it should be allowed to join Thompson’s existing lawsuit. Greenberry relied on a legal doctrine that allows claims to be added after the statute-of-limitations deadline if the claims “relate back” to claims that were filed prior to the deadline. The court rejected that argument. It held that “relation back” doctrine allows a party that has already filed a timely lawsuit to add new claims; it does not allow a new party to join the lawsuit after the deadline has passed.