UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

CUPRITE MINE PARTNERS LLC, an No. 13-16657 Arizona limited liability company, Plaintiff-Appellee, D.C. No. 4:12-cv-00286- v. DCB-LAB JOHN H. ANDERSON, a married man, acting in his sole and separate OPINION capacity; TODD CHRISTIAN ANDERSON, a married man, acting in his sole and separate capacity; MARGARET JANE ANDERSON LILJEMQUIST, a married woman, acting in her sole and separate capacity; PETER HAAKON ANDERSON, a single man; STACEY ELIZABETH ANDERSON ORD, a married woman, acting in her sole and separate capacity, Defendants-Appellants.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Arizona David C. Bury, District Judge, Presiding

Argued and Submitted November 17, 2015—San Francisco, California 2 CUPRITE MINE PARTNERS V. ANDERSON

Filed December 31, 2015

Before: FERDINAND F. FERNANDEZ and MILAN D. SMITH, JR., Circuit Judges, and BRIAN M. MORRIS,* District Judge.

Opinion by Judge Milan D. Smith, Jr.

SUMMARY**

Arizona Law / Mining Claims

The panel affirmed the district court’s summary judgment, and held that the district court properly applied Arizona substantive law regarding partition of mining claims and federal procedural standards for summary judgment.

Plaintiff is a limited liability company formed by children of Guy Anderson (or their successors-in-interest) who wished to sell their interests in Guy’s mining claims on a piece of property in Arizona’s Copper Mountain Mining District, and the defendants were Guy’s remaining child, and his children, who did not want to sell their interest in the mining claims. The district court entered judgment ordering partition by sale, and approved the sale of the property.

* The Honorable Brian M. Morris, District Judge for the U.S. District Court for the District of Montana, sitting by designation. ** This summary constitutes no part of the opinion of the court. It has been prepared by court staff for the convenience of the reader. CUPRITE MINE PARTNERS V. ANDERSON 3

The panel held that the district court did not abuse its discretion in allowing all of the defendants to be joined in a single partition action.

The panel held that the district court did not err in granting summary judgment in favor of plaintiff. As an initial matter, the panel held that plaintiff had a legal right to partition under Arizona law which gives any owner or claimant of property held in cotenancy the right to compel partition without regard to the preferences of other owners or claimants. The panel also held that the district court properly concluded that partition by sale was more appropriate than partition in kind. The panel further held that the district court reasonably structured the partition sale, and the sale did not violate any terms of the operative Arizona statute.

The panel held that the district court properly resolved the summary judgment motion according to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. Specifically, the panel held that even if Arizona law prohibited summary judgment and instead required a trial in a suit for partition by sale, such a suit was procedural in nature and a federal court sitting in diversity was required to follow federal, not state, procedural rules. The panel held that according to the facts as presented on summary judgment the outcome – partition by sale – would have been identical even if the district court had held a trial. The panel concluded that the district court properly granted relief on summary judgment where there was no genuine dispute of material fact to be resolved at trial. 4 CUPRITE MINE PARTNERS V.