Washington, July 18 – Lawyers for Elouise Cobell, the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit that has won a full and complete accounting of Individual Indian Trust Accounts, issued the following comments on today’s ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia:
The three-judge panel of the court of appeals leaves intact the important findings of the Norton contempt decision, notably that the Secretary is "unfit" and that the government deceived the district court when it filed false reports on the status of trust reform and the well-documented malfeasance in the management of the Individual Indian Trust.
Once again, the appeals court has found that what it calls the “ultimate conclusion” of the lower court -- that the government breached of its fiduciary duties to Individual Indian Trust account beneficiaries -- is correct.
While the court lifted the contempt findings from Secretary Norton and Assistant Secretary McCaleb, it left untouched the lower court’s conclusions that both were “unfit trustees” who had failed to discharge fundamental duties owed to the 500,000 Indian Trust beneficiaries.
In violation of the law of this circuit, the government never argued in the lower court that the Secretary Norton and Assistant Secretary McCaleb should have been tried for criminal contempt. Had those issues been aired in the District court, today’s decision might have been different. In any event, we accept the court’s conclusions that their behavior was, if anything, criminal in nature.
The appeals court also reconfirmed Judge Lamberth’s jurisdiction in the ongoing process that just concluded in a 44-day trial on ways to reform the trust and get on with the business of making a full and complete accounting of the Indian trust accounts.
It is now time for a receiver to take charge of those trust assets and quickly move this case to the fair and full accounting that Indians have been expecting since 1887.
We are in the process of determining whether to appeal the appellate panel’s unprecedented application of criminal standards to a civil contempt proceeding.
contact: Bill McAllister 703 385-6996
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