Judge Orders Taxpayers to pay for delaying Indians' Suit
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A federal judge ordered the government Tuesday to pay more than $600,000 for failing to produce documents promptly in a lawsuit concerning the trouble-plagued Indian trust fund. The case is a classic example of lawyers profiting on lawsuits intended to bring relief to private citizens. In a familiar scenario, played out in courtrooms across America, the citizen files a lawsuit and lawyers end-up with all the proceeds. Lawyers can collect taxpayers funds for attorney's fees but the citizen is prohibited from collecting a judgment from the same taxpayers funds. (1) U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth said the payment is to cover "all expenses and reasonable attorney fees" incurred by Indian plaintiffs because of government delay and misconduct in not providing records that detail trust fund mismanagement. Lamberth said that he was dismayed that taxpayers "will be forced to pay for the misconduct of their government's officials and attorneys." He said in his 45-page opinion he wished he could hold individual government attorneys liable but is precluded from doing so. The order does not address the merits of the class-action lawsuit brought by the Indians, who demand the court take over the trouble plagued trust fund, overhaul its error-filled accounting system and make restitutions to Indians who lost money. The award of fees stems from a two-year period in which lawyers for the Indians were blocked repeatedly from obtaining documents on individual Indian accounts. The legal fees and other expenses, totaling $624,643.50 to be awarded to seven attorneys, cover from November, 1996, to January 1999. (2) The Interior Department was ordered in late 1996 to turn over statements, checks and other documents concerning trust-fund accounts held by five Indians who are lead plaintiffs in the lawsuit. Government lawyers and officials "almost immediately disobeyed (the order) and successfully covered up their disobedience through semantics and strained, unilateral, self-serving interpretations of their own duties," wrote Lamberth in assessing the legal fees. In late February, Lamberth found Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt and then Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin in contempt because they failed to produce documents sought by the Indians in connection with the suit. He accused Interior officials of foot-dragging and making "outright false statements" to keep from turning over the records. The government argued that many records involving more than 300,000 Indian accounts were missing, others were stored haphazardly including some in a warehouse that for a time had been infected by virus-carrying rodents. Many of the records still have not been found, officials said. The government admits it cannot accurately document the $550 million fund that belongs to individual Indians from land holdings, royalty payments and other assets dating back generations. Another $2.5 billion in the fund belongs to Indian tribes but is not part of the lawsuit. The Indian's attorneys had sought more than $2.3 million in reimbursements for legal fees and expenses, but Lamberth denied some fees as well as about $1.2 million paid to an accounting firm to try to assess how much money should be in the trust accounts by using a sampling of accounts. Meanwhile, Lamberth has received final arguments in the suit and could rule this month. One human being, calling himself a federal judge, will decide the fate of more than $3,000,000,000, plus an undetermined amount in attorney's fees. Another untold aspect of the story is, what happened to the right to a jury trial? 1. "The Judicial power of the United States shall not be construed to extend to any suit in law or equity, commenced or prosecuted against one of the United States by Citizens of another state, or by Citizens or Subjects of any Foreign State." Eleventh Amendment 2. Delaying discovery is a common occurrence especially in suits against government officials. By delaying discovery the government will kill the merits of a lawsuit, run up huge attorney's fees, penalize the citizen plaintiff and eliminate the citizens' ability to obtain redress of his grievance.
Coming soon - Can Congress pass laws allowing states to be sued, notwithstanding the Eleventh Amendment? In 1989 the Supreme Court tentatively said yes, as long as Congress clearly expresses its intent to do so. But then, in a 1996 case called Seminole Tribe v. Florida, it changed its mind and ruled that "the background principle of state sovereign immunity embodied in the Eleventh Amendment" prevents Congress from using the powers granted to it under the unamended Constitution to pass laws exposing states to lawsuits. Find out how the Supreme Court's inability to rule consistently in all cases is destroying the Constitution and shattering American Dreams. |
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