COFFIN, Circuit Judge.
The plaintiff below, an inmate in a Rhode Island prison, claimed the state was prosecuting him because he had exercised certain rights guaranteed prisoners by an earlier consent decree issued by the District Court of the District of Rhode Island. The district court held no evidentiary hearing, but did hear arguments from counsel before entering a preliminary injunction against the state proceedings. Before defendants could obtain review of that order in this court, the district court dissolved the preliminary injunction. Plaintiff now moves to dismiss the appeal as moot.
Defendants urge that the appeal is not moot because there is involved a continuing controversy between state officials and the prisoners over the rights of prisoners. If any of these prisoners are prosecuted, say defendants, they will seek a similar injunction, which the defendants believe the district court has no power to grant.
We recognize the “recurring controversy” exception to the normal rule against hearing cases no longer in dispute. See Marchand v. Director, U. S. Probation Office, 421 F.2d 331, 333-334 (1st Cir.1970). We do not think, however, that the possibly continuing controversy between state officials and prisoners means that there is also the likelihood of continuing controversy over whether the district court has power to temporarily enjoin .any state prosecutions against prisoners. The court has done so in only one instance; this is not like a situation where an agency continually issues short term orders on the basis of questionable authority. Southern Pacific Terminal Co. v. I.C.C., 219 U.S. 498, 31 S.Ct. 279, 55 L.Ed. 310 (1911). Moreover, in some limited circumstances the district court clearly has authority to enjoin state prosecutions of prisoners. 28 U.S.C. § 2283; Drombrowski v. Pfister, 380 U.S. 479, 85 S.Ct. 1116, 14 L.Ed.2d 22 (1965). Whether this preliminary injunction was necessary in aid of the disti’ict court’s jurisdiction, to protect or effectuate its earlier judgment, or to prevent a chilling of prisoners’ rights, is a legal question that cannot be separated from the precise facts of this case. So is the vexing question whether the district court had sufficient factual basis to issue a preliminary injunction.
If we were to decide this case, the court would, if another prisoner sought a similar injunction, still have to face the basic question whether the facts fell within one of the three exceptions to the rule against enjoining state court proceedings. The propriety of the preliminary injunction is a question so integrated with the factual setting that our ruling in this case might offer the district court little guidance.
The appeal is dismissed.
What follows is an opinion from a United States Court of Appeals.
Intervenors who participated as parties at the courts of appeals should be counted as either appellants or respondents when it can be determined whose position they supported. For example, if there were two plaintiffs who lost in district court, appealed, and were joined by four intervenors who also asked the court of appeals to reverse the district court, the number of appellants should be coded as six.
In some cases there is some confusion over who should be listed as the appellant and who as the respondent. This confusion is primarily the result of the presence of multiple docket numbers consolidated into a single appeal that is disposed of by a single opinion. Most frequently, this occurs when there are cross appeals and/or when one litigant sued (or was sued by) multiple litigants that were originally filed in district court as separate actions. The coding rule followed in such cases should be to go strictly by the designation provided in the title of the case. The first person listed in the title as the appellant should be coded as the appellant even if they subsequently appeared in a second docket number as the respondent and regardless of who was characterized as the appellant in the opinion.
To clarify the coding conventions, consider the following hypothetical case in which the US Justice Department sues a labor union to strike down a racially discriminatory seniority system and the corporation (siding with the position of its union) simultaneously sues the government to get an injunction to block enforcement of the relevant civil rights law. From a district court decision that consolidated the two suits and declared the seniority system illegal but refused to impose financial penalties on the union, the corporation appeals and the government and union file cross appeals from the decision in the suit brought by the government. Assume the case was listed in the Federal Reporter as follows:
United States of America,
Plaintiff, Appellant
v
International Brotherhood of Widget Workers,AFL-CIO
Defendant, Appellee.
International Brotherhood of Widget Workers,AFL-CIO
Defendants, Cross-appellants
v
United States of America.
Widgets, Inc. & Susan Kuersten Sheehan, President & Chairman
of the Board
Plaintiff, Appellants,
v
United States of America,
Defendant, Appellee.
This case should be coded as follows:Appellant = United States, Respondents = International Brotherhood of Widget Workers Widgets, Inc., Total number of appellants = 1, Number of appellants that fall into the category "the federal government, its agencies, and officials" = 1, Total number of respondents = 3, Number of respondents that fall into the category "private business and its executives" = 2, Number of respondents that fall into the category "groups and associations" = 1.
Your task is to identify the state of the first listed state or local government agency that is an appellant.