Wagner and Sancho sued the U.S. Department of Energy, Fermilab, the National Science Foundation, and (nominally) CERN in Hawaii federal court, seeking to enjoin LHC operation on the grounds it could produce a planet-destroying micro black hole or strangelet. Chief Judge Helen Gillmor dismissed on jurisdictional grounds — the court lacked jurisdiction over CERN operations abroad and over agencies that don’t control the LHC — without reaching the scientific merits (NEPA claims against the U.S. agencies were also rejected). On appeal, a Ninth Circuit panel (B. Fletcher, Pregerson, Clifton, argued June 2010) affirmed on similarly procedural grounds: no credible threat of harm demonstrated for standing purposes, and no U.S. defendant controlled the Collider. Notably the case was decided entirely on jurisdiction/standing, not on any judicial finding about the physics. relevance_note: The only instance where the safety dispute reached a court; its purely procedural resolution means “the courts declined to rule on the physics” is itself a data point about how the controversy was — and was not — adjudicated. Also the direct empirical case study for Johnson’s law-review analysis (below).