Cobell v. Kempthorne Update

Last August I posted that Judge James Robertson issued his final ruling in the Cobell v. Kempthorne case, concluding that Indian beneficiaries are owed $455.6 million for mismanagement of their trust funds.

The plaintiffs appealed that decision claiming that they are entitled to much more… something to the tune of $47 billion in oil, grazing and minerals royalties that the Interior Department has been collecting as a trustee since 1887 but never has come close to paying.

Yesterday a three-judge federal appeals panel heard arguments and is expected to rule within a few months on the 10 year old class-action lawsuit.

There is the possibility that the final decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia could be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Basically the plaintiffs, the Indians, have won their battle and now its just a matter of determining how much their award will be.

Government lawyers told the appeals court yesterday that a 2001 federally commissioned audit of select records shows the Interior essentially has paid what it owes and the Bureau of Indian Affairs kept "remarkably" accurate accounts.

"Nothing that we found shows that the plaintiffs are owed any money," Department of Justice Attorney Alisa Klein told the panel, adding that the lower court "was overstepping its bounds" in making an award.

But Elouise Cobell, a Blackfeet tribal member from Montana and the lawsuit's lead plaintiff thinks differently. After the arguments she stated, "They're going to lose this one. I feel really optimistic."

No matter how much the award, the task of deciding how it should be paid out will be a considerable challenge due to the alleged mismanagement of records by the BIA.

Thousands of records have been lost and destroyed in recent decades, making the task of accurate repayment impossible, said Dennis Gingold, lawyer for the plaintiffs. That would force a system of "rough justice," he said, in which individual awards would be made on a per-capita basis or based on what kind of land Native Americans held.

Source:
http://www.argusleader.com/article/20090512/NEWS/905120325/1001