Lawsuit Inc. strikes again

A Las Vegas Review-Journal editorial:

Over at the courthouse, the first environmental attorneys show up with their carry-out coffee cups, just ahead of the crows, waiting for the windows to open so they can file their latest actions, banning any further attempts at human progress in Southern Nevada. First in line today are the grim reapers of the Tucson-based Center for Biological Diversity, suing agents of the federal government for allowing plans to proceed for the development of homes and a golf course at Coyote Springs, in northeastern Clark County. The federal agencies should never have allowed owners of the property to make plans to use their own water rights by digging wells on their own lands, the lawyers will argue in court, because such "groundwater withdrawals" could destroy habitat crucial to the Mojave Desert tortoise and the Moapa dace, a finger-length minnow found only in the headwaters of the Muddy River, 60 miles northeast of Las Vegas. And the aggressors can't lose -- that's the beauty of it. Oh, this lawsuit may be tossed, eventually. But by then there will be scores of others. And the smug and spike-haired plaintiffs will still be reimbursed for their time and trouble, paid off with tax dollars by the very agencies they're suing. No federal judge has ever ruled, "You're wrong; the minnows won't be harmed; furthermore, I find no evidence that you really care one whit about these minnows -- you never visit or feed them -- that instead you've brought this action for no purpose other than causing expense and inconvenience to others, and therefore I'm charging you with all court costs and defendants' attorney fees -- personally."...