U.S. Is Penalized by Judge In Indian Trust Fund Case
Government Is Told to Pay for Using Delay Tactics
Washington Post
By: Neely Tucker
Washington Post Staff Writer
March 30, 2002
A federal judge yesterday ordered the government to pay attorney fees and other expenses to Indian plaintiffs as sanctions for government legal tactics used in combating a six-year lawsuit over the management of an Indian trust fund.
U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth ordered the Interior Department to pay 75 percent of the costs incurred by the Native American Rights Fund (NARF) and other plaintiffs for having to file court motions relating to two small parts of the sprawling lawsuit.
One part of the sanctions relates to a government request for a protective order that the court later held to be baseless. The second was for government requests for clarifications about what e-mails it was to produce to the court. The court held that those requests were intentional delays.
The total cost of the sanctions was not clear yesterday, as the Indian plaintiffs have 30 days to file their expenses and fees. But a lawyer for the plaintiffs said it would be less than the $600,000 in sanctions the judge imposed earlier in the case, after finding in February 1999 that the secretaries of the interior and the Treasury were in contempt of court.
“This order is another demonstration that the court sees a pattern and practice of government obfuscation and problematic litigation tactics,” said Keith Harper, an attorney with the NARF. “It’s more evidence of why we can’t trust government to tell the truth or follow court orders in this case.”
Lamberth’s orders were released late yesterday. John Wright, a spokesman for the Interior Department, said the department had not had a chance to review the papers.
“It would be premature for us to comment on orders we haven’t seen,” Wright said.
In another order issued yesterday, Lamberth absolved Interior Department officials from charges that they retaliated against a whistle-blower who had given depositions that an expensive new computer system that was designed to overhaul the troubled trust fund was failing. That employee, Mona Infield, was working at the Albuquerque branch of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. In 2000, she was ordered to stay home on paid administrative leave, after refusing to move to a new records branch being opened in Reston.
Lamberth ruled that the agency had adequately compensated Infield, but he cautioned that “the defendants should consider the prospect of future contempt proceedings before engaging in the type of behavior” that led to the charges.
The plaintiffs are suing the Interior Department for mismanaging a 115-year-old trust fund for as many as 500,000 Native Americans. The trust fund distributes to shareholders as much as $500 million in annual revenue from the leasing of grazing, oil, mineral or timber rights on millions of acres of Indian-owned land.
More than a century of shoddy bookkeeping, lost files and complicated rules of ownership have left an unknown amount of money missing. The Indian plaintiffs estimate the amount to be as much as $10 billion; the government estimates it to be far less.
Interior Secretary Gale A. Norton and a top deputy in the department are facing contempt charges on allegations that they covered up or lied to the court about the failures of the new computer system.
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