One has to admire the company's tenacity, but isn't this inability to take "no" for an answer getting a little out of hand?

We're talking about the endless lawsuits and appeals stemming from the Seven-Up Pete Venture's proposed gold mine on the headwaters of the Blackfoot River near Lincoln. The mine was stillborn when a 1998 ballot initiative passed that banned the cyanide leaching process the company was to have used. The Seven-Up Pete and its partner, Canyon Resources Corp., filed suits in both federal and state courts, accusing Montana of "taking" its property.

That's when the chorus of no's began. The venture's 2000 federal lawsuit was put on hold until it could exhaust its remedies in state courts. Those efforts fell when the state Supreme Court rejected the claims in 2005, determining that the company did not hold an operating permit at the time the cyanide ban was passed, so it had no property rights to take.

The U.S. Supreme Court declined to review that decision.

Then, in 2006, the company returned to its federal claims, but U.S. District Judge Charles C. Lovell ruled that states cannot be sued in federal court, noting also that the U.S. Supreme Court has said that federal courts will not reopen issues already decided in state courts. In April of this year, that ruling was affirmed by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Now the company, represented by the conservative Colorado Mountain States Legal Foundation, has appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court again, seeking a ruling that states can too be sued.

There's no doubt that millions of investors' dollars went down the drain went the cyanide initiative passed and plans for the mine near Lincoln -- hugely controversial in the 1990s -- had to be scrapped. But by now, a decade later, it would seem the issue has been settled.