Nevada v. United States Irrigation District v. United States Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe of Indians v. Irrigation District

• Citation: 103 S.Ct. 2906,77 L.Ed.2d 509,463 U.S. 110
• Decision Date: 24 June 1983
• Docket Number: TRUCKEE-CARSON,Nos. 81-2245,81-2276 and 82-38,s. 81-2245
• Parties: NEVADA, Petitioner v. UNITED STATES et al.IRRIGATION DISTRICT, Petitioner v. UNITED STATES et al. PYRAMID LAKE PAIUTE TRIBE OF INDIANS, Petitioner v.IRRIGATION DISTRICT et al
• Court: United States Supreme Court

463 U.S. 110

103 S.Ct. 2906

77 L.Ed.2d 509

NEVADA, Petitioner

v UNITED STATES et al.

TRUCKEE-CARSON IRRIGATION DISTRICT, Petitioner

v. UNITED STATES et al.

PYRAMID LAKE PAIUTE TRIBE OF INDIANS, Petitioner

v. TRUCKEE-CARSON IRRIGATION DISTRICT et al.

Nos. 81-2245, 81-2276 and 82-38.

Argued April 27, 1983.

Decided June 24, 1983.

Syllabus

In 1913, the United States sued in Federal District Court, in what is known as the Orr Ditch litigation, to adjudicate water rights to the Truckee River for the benefit of both the Pyramid Lake Indian Reservation (Reservation) and the Newlands Reclamation Project (Project). Named as defendants were all water users on the Truckee River in Nevada. Eventually, in 1944, the District Court entered a final decree, pursuant to a settlement agreement, awarding various water rights to the Reservation and the Project, which by this time was now under the management of the Truckee-Carson Irrigation District (TCID). In 1973, the United States filed the present action in the same District Court on behalf of the Reservation, seeking additional rights to the Truckee River, and the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe (Tribe) was permitted to intervene in support of the United States. Named as defendants were all persons presently claiming water rights to the Truckee River and its tributaries in Nevada, including the defendants in the Orr Ditch litigation and their successors, individual farmers who owned land in the Project, and the TCID. The defendants asserted res judicata as an affirmative defense, claiming that the United States and the Tribe were precluded by the Orr Ditch decree from litigating the asserted claim. The District Court sustained the defense and dismissed the complaint. The Court of Appeals affirmed in part and reversed in part, holding that the Orr Ditch decree concluded the dispute between, on the one hand, the Orr Ditch defendants, their successors in interest, and subsequent appropriators of the Truckee River, and, on the other hand, the United States and the Tribe, but not the dispute between the Tribe and the Project landowners. The court found that since neither the Tribe nor the Project landowners were parties in Orr Ditch but instead were represented by the United States, and since their interests may have conflicted in that proceeding, it could not be found that the United States had intended to bind these nonparties inter se, absent a specific statement of adversity in the pleadings.

Held: Res judicata prevents the United States and the Tribe from litigating the instant claim. Pp. 121-145.

(a) Where the Government represented the Project landowners in Orr Ditch, the landowners, not the Government, received the beneficial interest in the water rights confirmed to the Government. Ickes v. Fox, 300 U.S. 82, 57 S.Ct. 412, 81 L.Ed. 525; Nebraska v. Wyoming, 325 U.S. 589, 65 S.Ct. 1332, 89 L.Ed. 1815. Therefore, the Government is not at liberty to simply reallocate the water rights decreed to the Reservation and the Project as if it owned those rights. Pp. 121-128.

(b) The cause of action asserted below is the same cause of action that was asserted in the Orr Ditch case. The record in that case, including the final decree and amended complaint, clearly shows that the Government was given an opportunity to litigate the Reservation's entire water right to the Truckee River, and that the Government intended to take advantage of that opportunity. Pp. 130-134.

(c) All of the parties below are bound by the Orr Ditch decree. The United States, as a party to the Orr Ditch litigation acting as a representative for the interests of the Reservation and the Project, cannot relitigate the Reservation's water rights with those who could use the Orr Ditch decree as a defense. The Tribe, whose interests were represented in Orr Ditch by the United States, also is bound by the Orr Ditch decree as are the Orr Ditch defendants and their successors. Moreover, under circumstances where after the Orr Ditch litigation was commenced the legal relationships were no longer simply those between the United States and the Tribe, but were also those between the United States, TCID, and the Project landowners, the interests of the Tribe and the Project landowners were sufficiently adverse so that both are now bound by the Orr Ditch decree. It need not be determined what the effect of the Government's representation of different interests would be under the law of private trustees and fiduciaries for that law does not apply where Congress has decreed that the Government have dual responsibilities. The Government does not "compromise" its obligation to one interest that Congress obliges it to represent when it simultaneously performs another task for another interest that Congress has obligated it by statute to do. And as to the defendants below who appropriated water from the Truckee River subsequent to the Orr Ditch decree, they too, as a necessary exception to the res judicata mutuality requirement, can use that decree against the plaintiffs below. These defendants have relied just as much on that decree in participating in the development of western Nevada as have the parties in the Orr Ditch case, and any other conclusion would make it impossible finally to quantify a reserved water right. Pp. 134-144.

649 F.2d 1286 (CA9 1981) and 666 F.2d 351 (CA9 1982), affirmed in part and reversed in part.

E. Barrett Prettyman, Jr., Washington, D.C., for the State of Nevada.

Frederick G. Girard, Sacramento, Cal., for Truckee-Carson Irr. Dist.

Robert S. Pelcyger, Boulder, Colo., for Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe of Indians.

Edwin S. Kneedler, Washington, D.C., for the United States.

[Amicus Curiae from pages 112-113 intentionally ]

REHNQUIST, Justice.

In 1913 the United States sued to adjudicate water rights to the Truckee River for the benefit of the Pyramid Lake Indian Reservation and the planned Newlands Reclamation Project. Thirty-one years later, in 1944, the United States District Court for the District of Nevada entered a final decree in the case pursuant to a settlement agreement. In 1973 the United States filed the present action in the same court on behalf of the Pyramid Lake Indian Reservation seeking additional water rights to the Truckee River. The issue thus presented is whether the Government may partially undo the 1944 decree, or whether principles of res judicata prevent it, and the intervenor Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe, from litigating this claim on the merits.

I

Nevada has, on the average, less precipitation than any other State in the Union. Except for drainage in the southeastern part of the State into the Colorado River, and drainage in the northern part of the State into the Columbia River, the rivers that flow in Nevada generally disappear into "sinks." Department of Agriculture Yearbook, Climate and Man (1941). The present litigation relates to water rights in the Truckee River, one of the three principal rivers flowing through west central Nevada. It rises in the High Sierra in Placer County, California, flows into and out of Lake Tahoe, and thence down the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada mountains. It flows through Reno, Nevada, and after a course of some 120 miles debouches into Pyramid Lake, which has no outlet.

It has been said that Pyramid Lake is "widely considered the most beautiful desert lake in North America [and that its] fishery [has] brought it worldwide fame. A species of cutthroat trout . . . grew to world record size in the desert lake and attracted anglers from throughout the world." S. Wheeler, The Desert Lake 90-92 (1967). The first recorded sighting of Pyramid Lake by non-Indians occurred in January of 1844 when Captain John C. Fremont and his party camped nearby. In his journal Captain Fremont reported that the Lake "broke upon our eyes like the ocean" and was "set like a gem in the mountains." 1 The Expeditions of John Charles Fremont 604-605 (1970). Commenting upon the fishery, as well as the Pyramid Lake Indians that his party was camping with, Captain Fremont wrote:

"An Indian brought in a large fish to trade, which we had the inexpressible satisfaction to find was a salmon trout; we gathered round him eagerly. The Indians were amused with our delight, and immediately brought in numbers; so that the camp was soon stocked. Their flavor was excellent—superior, in fact, to that of any fish I have ever known. They were of extraordinary size—about as large as the Columbia river salmon—generally from two to four feet in length." Id., at 609.

When first viewed by Captain Fremont in early 1844, Pyramid Lake was some 50 miles long and 12 miles wide. Since that time the surface area of the Lake has been reduced by about 20,000 acres.

The origins of the cases before us are found in two historical events involving the Federal Government in this part of the country. First, in 1859 the Department of the Interior set aside nearly half a million acres in what is now western Nevada as a reservation for the area's Paiute Indians. In 1874 President Ulysses S. Grant by executive order confirmed the withdrawal as the Pyramid Lake Indian Reservation. The Reservation includes Pyramid Lake, the land surrounding it, the lower reaches of the Truckee River, and the bottom land alongside the lower Truckee.

Then, with the passage of the Reclamation Act of 1902, ch. 1093, 32 Stat. 388, the Federal Government was designated to play a more prominent role in the development of the West. That Act directed the Secretary of the Interior to withdraw from public entry arid lands in specified western States, reclaim the lands through irrigation projects, and then to restore the lands to entry pursuant to the homestead laws and certain conditions imposed by the Act itself. Accordingly, the Secretary withdrew from the public domain approximately 200,000 acres in western Nevada, which ultimately became the Newlands Reclamation Project. The Project was designed to irrigate a substantial...