Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe of Indians v. United States

• Decision Date: 26 October 1963
• Docket Number: Civ. No. 378 C. D.
• Citation: 222 F. Supp. 911
• Parties: CHEYENNE RIVER SIOUX TRIBE OF INDIANS, Eagle Butte, South Dakota, Plaintiff, v. UNITED STATES of America, and Peter Hiatt, Eagle Butte, South Dakota, Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — District of South Dakota

222 F. Supp. 911

CHEYENNE RIVER SIOUX TRIBE OF INDIANS, Eagle Butte, South Dakota, Plaintiff, v. UNITED STATES of America, and Peter Hiatt, Eagle Butte, South Dakota, Defendants.

Civ. No. 378 C. D.

United States District Court D. South Dakota, Central Division.

October 26, 1963.

William Howard Payne, Washington, D. C., Gen. Counsel for Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, and Blaine Simons, of Simons, Beasom & Gibbs, Sioux Falls, S. D., for plaintiff.

Harold Doyle, U. S. Atty., and Robert K. Krogstad, Asst. U. S. Atty., Sioux Falls, S. D., for the United States.

Warren May, of Martens, Goldsmith, May & Porter, Pierre, S. D., and Ramon Roubideaux, Fort Pierre, S. D., for defendant Peter Hiatt.

BECK, District Judge.

This is a petition by the plaintiff, hereinafter referred to as the Tribe, to vacate, set aside and permanently enjoin enforcement of a judgment entered on May 8, 1961, in the case of the United States of America, Plaintiff, vs 640.10 acres of land, more or less, situate in Stanley and Dewey Counties, State of South Dakota, and Peter Hiatt, et al., and Unknown Owners, Defendants, Civil No. 274 C.D., District of South Dakota.

The petitioner proceeds on the theory that the Tribe had a vested interest in the fund out of which that judgment is to be satisfied, hence, an indispensable party and since it hadn't been made a party that its said interest wasn't and could not have been affected under the provisions of the Fifth Amendment that: "No person shall be deprived of his property without due process".

As against that claim it is the government's position and that of Hiatt's, no one else being interested and on that point there is no dispute, that the United States and not the Tribe, under the Act of September 3, 1954, Public Law 776, 83rd Congress, 68 Stat. 1191¹, and the rule invoked in Shields v. Barrow, 17 How. 130, 58 U.S. 130, 137, 15 L.Ed. 158, Williams v. Bankhead, 19 Wall. 563, 86 U.S. 563, 22 L.Ed. 184, Heckman v. United States, 224 U.S. 413, 32 S.Ct. 424, 56 L.Ed. 820, Barta v. Oglala Sioux Tribe of Pine Ridge Reservation, 8 Cir., 259 F.2d 553 (1958), cert. den. 358 U.S. 932, 79 S.Ct. 320, 3 L.Ed.2d 304, and others, was the real party in interest; that the Tribe actually participated in all of the proceedings in the former action and that all of its interest in the fund was then finally adjudicated and in any event that all of the matters before the court in this case were before it on the Tribe's motion to intervene in the other and in the course thereof, no appeal having been made, brought to a final close as that motion was denied on August 2, 1961.

The case arises out of and under the terms of Sections I, II and XV of the Act, which relates to the government's taking of, paying for and procedure in getting some 104,000 acres within the Tribe's reservation for construction on the Missouri River of the Oahe Dam.

There is little if any dispute as to the material facts, it being admitted or established that the effective date of the Act was August 9, 1955²; that the consideration for that agreement and the entire taking referred to in said Section I, was $5,384,014 which was deposited to the credit of the Tribe in the Treasury of the United States until expended; that the Tribe under the same Section, prior to the commencement of this action, with the approval of the Secretary of the Interior and in line with the revised appraisal of the Missouri River Basin investigating staff of the Department of the Interior, had disbursed $2,250,000; that Hiatt's participation in that sum was $12,469.17; that his recovery in the former action exceeded that sum by $10,620.83, besides interest; that the Tribe's interest in what remained on deposit to that extent would be reduced should the judgment be satisfied; and that all other claims against the deposit which originally could have been asserted by affected landowners, had theretofore been settled.

It is also admitted or established that the government with actual notice to, knowledge and consent of the Tribe and at its instance, commenced the former action³ pursuant to the terms of Section XV of the Act and that the Tribe thereafter joined the government in causing it to be tried and defended before a Board of Commissioners named and appointed under F.R.Civ.P. 71A(h) and in the subsequent proceedings which led to the judgment.

There is formal record basis to show the motion to intervene to have been in the following form:

"Now comes Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe who respectfully moves for leave to intervene in this action in order to assert the objections to findings of fact, conclusions of law and report of Commissioners set forth in its proposed pleadings, of which a copy is hereto attached, on the ground that while any judgment in this action will ostensibily sic be against the United States of America, the real party in interest who will be bound by and adversely affected by said judgment is the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, in that any judgment will be paid out of funds appropriated by the Congress of the United States to the Sioux Indians of the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation, South Dakota.",

the basis used in support thereof⁴ and the finality in the disposition as the court, upon a recital in its order of the facts⁵ "disallowed and denied" it "in its entirety". There is like basis to show the motion to intervene to have been made within the time limit for appeal from the judgment, F.R.Civ.P. 73(a).

Whether the order denying that motion was a "final decision" under 28 U.S. C.A. § 1291, hence appealable, and if so of such scope as to have been a final adjudication of the issues now being determined, are questions which were affirmatively settled in Hirshhorn v. Mine Safety Appliances Co., et al, 3 Cir., 190 F.2d 675 (1951), on another appeal in the same case, reported in 193 F.2d 489 (1952), where such orders were held appealable and in Cohen v. Beneficial Loan Corp., 337 U.S. 541, 69 S.Ct. 1221, 93 L.Ed. 1528, where the order in that case was held to have been a "final decision" under that Section, but restricted as to application in United States v. Munsingwear, 8 Cir., 178 F.2d 204 (1949) and in the reference in that case to Johnson Company v. Wharton, 152 U.S. 252, 14 S.Ct. 608, 38 L.Ed. 429, by the observation in Johnson that:

"The inquiry as to the conclusiveness of a judgment in a prior suit between the same parties can only be whether the court rendering such judgment — whatever the nature of the question decided, or the value of the matter in dispute — had jurisdiction of the parties and the subject-matter, and whether the question sought to be raised in the subsequent suit was covered by the pleadings, and actually determined, in the former suit. The existence or nonexistence of a right, in either party, to have the judgment in the prior suit reexamined, upon appeal or writ of error, cannot, in any case, control this inquiry. * * * Looking at the reasons upon which the rule rests, its operation cannot be restricted to those cases which, after final judgment or decree, may be taken by appeal or writ of error to a court of appellate jurisdiction.",

and by a further reference in the same case to the comment in Commissioner of Internal Revenue v. Sunnen, 333 U.S. 591, 68 S.Ct. 715, 92 L.Ed. 898 that:

"It is first necessary to understand something of the recognized meaning and scope of res judicata, a doctrine judicial in origin. The general rule of res judicata applies to repetitious suits involving the same cause of action. It rests upon considerations of economy of judicial time and public policy favoring the establishment of certainty in legal relations. The rule provides that when a court of competent jurisdiction has entered a final judgment on the merits of a cause of action, the

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