FirstBank v. Harthman Leasing III, LLP

Considering a commercial tenant’s appeal from a 2024 order of the Superior Court of the Virgin Islands that in all respects affirmed a 2016 judgment of the Magistrate Division of the Superior Court granting restitution of the premises at issue to the landlord in its 2015 forcible detainer action, and which also dismissed with prejudice the tenant’s appeal from the Magistrate Division’s 2016 judgment, the mootness doctrine constitutes a mandatory, nonwaivable claims-processing rule that this Court must invoke unless an exception applies. In the specific context presented here—an appeal in a forcible detainer action in which the parties’ possessory rights to the same property have been conclusively adjudicated in a separate action by a judgment that became final during the appeal—no such exception applies. Accordingly, the Court must invoke the mootness doctrine sua sponte, and does not review the case on its merits. The tenant’s  appeal from the Superior Court’s 2024 order affirming the Magistrate Division’s 2016 judgment is dismissed as moot.