Macarthur v. San Juan County

• Citation: 566 F.Supp.2d 1239
• Decision Date: 02 July 2008
• Docket Number: Civil No. 2:00-CV-584BSJ.
• Parties: Dr. Steven MacARTHUR, et al., Plaintiffs, v. SAN JUAN COUNTY, et al., Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — District of Utah

566 F.Supp.2d 1239

Dr. Steven MacARTHUR, et al., Plaintiffs, v. SAN JUAN COUNTY, et al., Defendants.

Civil No. 2:00-CV-584BSJ.

United States District Court, D. Utah, Central Division.

July 2, 2008.

Susan Rose, Sandy, UT, for Plaintiffs.

Jesse C. Trentadue, Michael W. Homer, Suitter Axland, Robert R. Harrison, Snow Christensen & Martineau, Kathleen M. Liuzzi, Dunn & Dunn, Blaine J. Benard, Carolyn Cox, Holme Roberts & Owen, Christine T. Greenwood, Magleby & Greenwood PC, Salt Lake City, UT, for Defendants.

MEMORANDUM OPINION & ORDER RE: POST-MANDATE MOTIONS

BRUCE S. JENKINS, Senior District Judge.

On July 18, 2007, the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit decided the parties' appeals from this court's October 12, 2005 Memorandum Opinion and Order denying federal court enforcement of certain interlocutory orders entered by the Navajo tribal court in favor of plaintiffs Singer, Riggs and Dickson, as well as this court's December 16, 2005 Memorandum Opinion & Order denying their motion for reconsideration or relief from judgment. The clerk of this court received the court of appeals' mandate on August 27, 2007. On February 19, 2008, the United States Supreme Court denied the petition of Singer, Riggs and Dickson for a writ of certiorari. See Mox-Arthur v. San Juan County, 391 F.Supp.2d 895 (D.Utah), reconsideration denied, 405 F.Supp.2d 1302 (D.Utah 2005), judgment reversed in part, vacated in part, affirmed in part, 497 F.3d 1057 (10th Cir.2007), cert. denied, ___ U.S. ___, 128 S.Ct. 1229, 170 L.Ed.2d 62 (2008).

Ordinarily, the denial of certiorari signals the end of the appellate process and often, the end of the litigation itself.

In this case, the San Juan County defendants filed a motion on March 24, 2008 to enjoin further tribal court proceedings and for sanctions (dkt. no. 959), alleging that plaintiffs Singer, Riggs and Dickson were seeking joinder in proceedings before the Navajo Supreme Court in another case, Ford Motor Company v. Kayenta District Court, No. SC-CV-33-07, in order to raise the question of tribal court jurisdiction and the enforceability of the interlocutory tribal court orders previously entered in their favor, and urging the Navajo Supreme Court to ignore the rulings of the Tenth Circuit and this court in this case. Other defendants soon joined in that motion (dkt. nos. 965, 971), and plaintiffs Singer, Riggs and Dickson filed a series of motions and memoranda in response (dkt. nos. 962, 963, 967, 968, 969, 970, 977, 978, 979).

In the interim, on April 2, 2008, the Navajo Supreme Court denied the plaintiffs' motion for joinder in the Ford Motor proceeding, thus affording the plaintiffs no further opportunity to relitigate their jurisdictional issues in that forum. (See Order Denying Motion to Amend Amicus Brief and Appendix and Join Parties in SR-CV-1672-99, dated April 2, 2008, annexed as an exhibit to Truck Insurance's Motion to Join the San Juan County Defendants' Motion to Enjoin Plaintiffs and Their Counsel from Further Proceedings in the Navajo Tribal Court and for Sanctions, filed April 9, 2008 (dkt. no. 971).) The plaintiffs then filed a Rule 60(b) motion for relief from the effect of the Tenth Circuit's July 18th decision, asking this court "to alter the holding of its 2005 decision, and grant, under the Plaintiffs' proffered analysis, all relief ... by issuing an order enforcing all the Navajo Court orders, leaving any problems with mootness or other issues for defendants to work out with the Navajo Court." ("Plaintiffs Rule 60 motion Memorandum in support," filed April 21, 2008 (dkt. no. 982), at 4.)

The pending motions were heard on May 12, 2008. Having reviewed the motions, memoranda and exhibits submitted by the parties, and having heard the arguments of counsel, the court ruled that plaintiffs Singer, Riggs and Dickson and their attorneys shall be individually enjoined from proceeding in any other forum to relitigate the questions of jurisdiction, immunity and enforceability of tribal court orders already decided by the court of appeals in its July 18th ruling. (See Minute Entry, dated May 12, 2008 (dkt. no. 1005).) The defendants' motion to enjoin further proceedings was thus granted to that extent. The court denied the defendants' request for sanctions. The court also denied the plaintiffs' Rule 60(b) motion. (Id.)

Counsel for the San Juan County defendants submitted a proposed form of order reflecting the court's May 12th rulings. Plaintiffs' counsel filed a forty-one page written objection to that proposed order, rearguing in detail the plaintiffs' jurisdictional theories and the grounds for relief from the judgment of the court of appeals already asserted by their Rule 60(b) motion, with additional references intended to place the proposed order "in perspective of this Court and its history." (Plaintiffs' Objection to the Proposed Order, filed May 29, 2008 (dkt. no. 993) ("Pltfs' Obj."), at 1.) Defendants' counsel filed responses to the plaintiffs' objection (dkt. nos. 994, 995).

Having reviewed the proposed form of order, plaintiffs' objections thereto, and the defendant's responses, the court has chosen to elaborate further upon the specific rulings made at the May 12th hearing and the reasons therefor in this Memorandum Opinion & Order.

Plaintiffs' Objections to the Proposed Order

Plaintiffs' counsel acknowledges the substance of the Tenth Circuit's ruling in this case, namely, that the Navajo tribal court lacked subject matter jurisdiction over the defendants named in the interlocutory tribal court orders that Singer, Riggs and Dickson sought to enforce in this court. Counsel's objection to the proposed order—and indeed, many of plaintiffs' recent submissions to this court—raises a more fundamental question: how is it possible for the federal courts to diminish Navajo tribal court authority over non-Indians, particularly in the context of litigation in which the Navajo Nation is not a party? Counsel insists that neither this court nor the court of appeals has addressed this question in the opinions already issued in this case, and that the answer to this question casts serious doubt upon the validity and binding effect of the Tenth Circuit's judgment. (Pltf's Obj. at 6, 25-27.) If anything, plaintiffs argue, the legal status of the Navajo Nation, the federal government's fiduciary relationship with the Navajo Nation, and principles of res judicata require that the federal courts summarily enforce orders of the Navajo tribal courts without further examination or inquiry. (Id. at 17-35.)

The plaintiffs' view of the governing legal framework was aptly summarized by Felix S. Cohen in the 1942 edition of the Handbook of Federal Indian Law:

The whole course of judicial decision on the nature of Indian tribal powers is marked by adherence to three fundamental principles: (1) An Indian tribe possesses, in the first instance, all the powers of any sovereign state. (2) Conquest renders the tribe subject to the legislative power of the United States, and, in substance, terminates the external powers of sovereignty of the tribe, e.g., its power to enter into treaties with foreign nations, but does not by itself affect the internal sovereignty of the tribe, i.e., its powers of local self-government. (3) These powers are subject to qualification by treaties and by express legislation of Congress, but, save as thus expressly qualified, full powers of internal sovereignty are vested in the Indian tribes and in their duly constituted organs of government.

Felix S. Cohen, Handbook of Federal Indian Law 123 (1942) (footnotes omitted); accord Powers of Indian Tribes, 55 I.D. 14, 22 (1934), 1 Opinions of the Solicitor of the Department of the Interior Relating to Indian Affairs 1917-1974 445, 449.

Plaintiffs' counsel canvasses the treaties and statutes defining the legal relationship between the United States and the Navajo Nation and finds nothing expressly delimiting the jurisdiction of the Navajo tribal courts to adjudicate disputes involving tribal members and non-Indians arising within the boundaries of the Navajo Reservation. General statutes such as the Indian Civil Rights Act speak of the rights of persons—not solely tribal members—in dealing with tribal governments, suggesting that the Navajo Nation has authority to act in relation to all persons within its territorial jurisdiction in the enforcement of its own laws. More recent legislation, such as the Indian Tribal Justice Act of 1993 and the Indian Tribal Justice Technical and Legal Assistance Act of 2000, was framed in terms firmly supportive of tribal self-government and effective tribal court systems, and recognizes "tribal justice systems as the appropriate forums for the adjudication of disputes affecting personal and property rights," 25 U.S.C.A. § 3601(6) (2001), making no distinction between tribal and non-Indian litigants.

Yet the answer to the plaintiffs' more fundamental question lies beyond the "network" of specific Navajo treaties and federal statutes relied upon by plaintiffs' counsel in support of her argument, or the formulation articulated by Cohen years ago that likewise was rooted in the language of treaties and statutes. As this court previously explained, at least where tribal authority over non-Indians is concerned, the Supreme Court discarded the elegant simplicity of Cohen's analysis in favor of an amorphous legal standard that finds its source not in treaty or statute, but in abstract notions of intergovernmental dependency and subservience.

The Supreme Court and the Implicit Divestiture of Indian Tribal Authority

In Oliphant v. Suquamish Indian Tribe, 435 U.S. 191, 98 S.Ct. 1011, 55 L.Ed.2d 209 (1978), the Supreme Court held that all Indian tribes lack inherent jurisdiction to try and punish non-Indians for criminal offenses committed within reservation boundaries because "Indian tribes are prohibited from exercising both those powers of autonomous...