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Federal appeals court orders Interior Department to account in Indian Trust case

By Bernard Hibbitts (editor) and University of Pittsburgh School of Law students.

[JURIST] The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled Friday that the US Department of the Interior (DOI) must provide an accounting in a 13-year class action lawsuit concerning the US government's alleged mismanagement of trust funds for a group of some 500,000 American Indians. Both parties appealed two separate rulings from the US District Court for the District of Columbia. In January 2008, district judge James Robertson ruled that the DOI "unreasonably delayed" the accounting of billions of dollars of American Indian money, holding that it was impossible for the DOI or for Congress to remedy the breach. In August 2008, Robertson ordered the federal government to pay $455.6 million in restitution, despite plaintiffs' claims that they were owed $58 billion. The DC Circuit vacated both orders and remanded for further proceedings, holding, "that while the district court's analysis of duty and breach are generally correct, the court erred in freeing the Department of the Interior from its burden to make an accounting." Congress established the Indian Trust in 1887 to hold proceeds from government-arranged leases of Indian lands. In an incendiary opinion in 2005, district judge Royce Lamberth required the DOI to apologize to the plaintiffs for its handling of the Trust, and to admit that information being provided to them regarding outstanding lost royalties on earnings from Indian land may be unreliable. In 2006, the DC Circuit removed Lamberth from the case and reassigned it to Robertson. In March 2007, the plaintiffs rejected a $7 billion settlement proposal from the US government.

Full post as published by JURIST - The Paper Chase on July 24, 2009 (boomark / email).