Chris, Joel, Jay,
Well done!
Jim
Jim
Weaver, K8JE, Director
ARRL
E-mail: k8je@arrl.org, Tel.: 513-459-1661
ARRL - The
national association for Amateur Radio
From: Chris Imlay
[mailto:w3kd@aol.com]
Sent: Wednesday, June 24, 2009
4:48 PM
To: arrl-odv
Cc: dhenderson@arrl.org
Subject: [arrl-odv:17864] Petition
for Writ of Mandamus -Filed
Greetings. At the
instruction of the President, implementing the direction of the
Executive Committee, today we filed the attached Petition for a Writ of
Mandamus with the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. This
asks the Court to order the FCC to comply with its opinion and mandate in our
BPL appeal, now more than a year old. A writ of mandamus commands an agency (or
a judge) to do what it is obligated to do as a ministerial matter. Though an
extraordinary writ, the FCC is expected to perform more promptly than a year
from the Court's order to do what the Court told the FCC to do. This appears a
textbook example of a case for issuance of mandamus to an agency. Agency
delay is a typical basis for mandamus.
What we expect will result from this is that the Commission will ask the Court
to hold off on issuing mandamus so that FCC, within a fixed period of time
(they typically ask for 90 days) can act on its obligation by itself. The
effect is the same: we will have dynamited FCC off top dead center. There is
also the possibility that FCC will quick like a bunny release something and
moot our Petition, in which case the same effect will have been achieved
by our filing. They do that sometimes to save face.
President Harrison and I told the FCC (OET) in late April
that our Executive Committee had told us to proceed with this if the
Commission did not act within a year from the date of the Court's mandate,
which was June 13, 2008. They nevertheless refused to provide any
timetable for acting on the Court's instruction.
I will have more to say about this in my Board report, but we have fired a
shot across the FCC's bow here, and it is satisfying to have done so.
Thanks to President Harrison, EVP Sumner and especially Director
Bellows for helpful edits and assistance on this.
The logistics of getting this filed after the Washington Metro collision on
Tuesday was "interesting" in the Chinese curse sense of the word.
Traffic around here appears similar to that of downtown
73, Chris W3KD
Christopher D. Imlay
Booth, Freret, Imlay & Tepper. P.C.
(301) 384-5525 telephone
(301) 384-6384 facsimile
W3KD@ARRL.ORG