Oneida Indian Nation of New York v. Burr

• Decision Date: 23 December 1987
• Citation: 132 A.D.2d 402,522 N.Y.S.2d 742
• Parties: ONEIDA INDIAN NATION OF NEW YORK, Respondent, v. Michael BURR et al., Appellants.
• Court: New York Supreme Court — Appellate Division

Page 742

522 N.Y.S.2d 742

132 A.D.2d 402

ONEIDA INDIAN NATION OF NEW YORK, Respondent, v. Michael BURR et al., Appellants.

Supreme Court, Appellate Division,

Third Department.

Dec. 23, 1987.

Bertram E. Hirsch, Floral Park, for appellants.

DeFrancisco, Menkin & Brunetti (John A. DeFrancisco, Syracuse, and Zuckerman, Spaeder, Goldstein, Taylor & Kolker, Christine Nicholson and William W. Taylor, III, of counsel), Washington, D.C., for respondent.

Before KANE, J.P., and MAIN, CASEY, WEISS and LEVINE, JJ.

LEVINE, Justice.

The complaint in the instant action alleges that plaintiff is the Oneida Indian Nation, one of the six original tribes of the Iroquois confederacy, and the owner of improved real property on the Oneida Indian Reservation in Madison County. In the action, plaintiff seeks compensatory and punative damages in tort based upon allegations that defendants, who were nonreservation Indians, committed trespass, intentionally injured plaintiff's physical property and interfered with plaintiff's business operation of a bingo establishment on the reservation. Defendants answered and pleaded several causes of action against third parties, denoted "counterclaims".

Plaintiff and the named third parties in the counterclaims moved to dismiss said counterclaims on grounds, inter alia, that personal jurisdiction had not been acquired over those third parties. Defendants then cross-moved to dismiss the complaint because plaintiff, as an Indian tribe, cannot bring suit in the courts of New York. Supreme Court granted the motion to dismiss the counterclaims and denied defendants' motion to dismiss the complaint. Supreme Court found that Indian Law § 5, as amended in 1953 (L.1953, ch. 671), in conjunction with 1950 Federal legislation (25 U.S.C. § 233 [64 U. S.Stat. 845] ) conferred jurisdiction upon the New York courts over an action such as this where an Indian tribe brings suit for damages under State tort law. This appeal by defendants ensued.

The sole issue raised on appeal is whether Supreme Court correctly ruled that plaintiff has capacity to sue by reason of 25 U.S.C. § 233 and Indian Law § 5. The Federal statute provides in pertinent part that:

The courts of the State of New York under the laws of such State shall have jurisdiction in civil actions and proceedings between Indians or between one or more Indians and any other person or persons to the same extent as the courts of the State shall have jurisdiction in other civil actions and proceedings, as now or hereafter defined by the laws of such State (25 U.S.C. § 233).

Indian Law § 5 similarly provides that:

Any action or special proceeding between Indians or between one or more Indians and any other person or persons may be prosecuted and enforced in any court of the state to the same extent as provided by law for other actions and special proceedings.

Defendants contend that it was settled in Johnson v. Long Is. R.R. Co., 162 N.Y. 462, 56 N.E. 992, and has been followed ever since that an Indian tribe lacks a legally cognizable corporate existence and, therefore, cannot bring suit in its own name without special enabling legislation. They further argue that Supreme Court's reliance on 25 U.S.C. § 233 and Indian Law § 5 was misplaced. Each statute, by its express terms, only confers jurisdiction in proceedings involving "Indians". Neither explicitly enables a suit to be brought in the name of a tribe. On the other hand, there are statutory provisos in 25 U.S.C. § 233 wherein specific references are made to tribes, e.g., that a tribe may, before the effective date of the statute, declare which tribal rules and customs it wishes to preserve as governing law and have them published in the Federal Register. According to defendants, this explicit usage of the phrase "Indian tribe" in the provisos to 25 U.S.C. § 233 demonstrates that the omission of a reference to tribes in the jurisdictional portion of the statute was intentional.

Defendants also quote copiously from the debates and the reports which comprise the legislative history of 25 U.S.C. § 233 to demonstrate that there was no Congressional intent to extend State court jurisdiction to actions brought by Indian tribes. This legislative history indicates that 25 U.S.C. § 233 had three general purposes: (1) to alleviate the handicaps of reservation Indians from obtaining adequate legal redress as a result of the absence or inadequacy of tribal courts; (2) to remedy the dearth of substantive Indian law governing, inter alia, commercial, employment and family relations among reservation Indians and between them and non-Indians; and (3) to promote the integration of Indians into the general society. Defendants argue that none of these aims pertains to or is furthered by giving Indian tribes access to the State courts.

Regarding Indian Law § 5, defendants contend that the legislative history provides even less support for any implication that tribes were to be given the right to litigate in the New York courts in their own names. They cite to memoranda in the Governor's Bill Jacket which support approval of the bill which became the present Indian Law § 5 (L.1953, ch. 671), and indicate that the purpose of the enactment was to confer concurrent jurisdiction upon the State courts with "peacemaker" courts on three specific Indian reservations. Defendan also point to other sections of the Indian Law enacted or amended either before or after the present Indian Law § 5 as being inconsistent with or superfluous to a construction of the statute giving Indian tribes full direct access to State courts in all civil proceedings. Defendants argue that all of the foregoing impels the conclusion, as a matter of law, that 25 U.S.C. § 233 and Indian Law § 5 do not enable plaintiff to bring this action in the courts of this State.

We disagree. At the outset, we find untenable as a ground for denying capacity to sue that Indian tribes lack a cognizable corporate existence to initiate an action in their own name. Under Federal common law, the tribes have long and repeatedly been recognized as jural entities, holding title to their territories and having standing to enforce their possessory rights through legal actions brought in their own names (see, e.g., Oneida Indian Nation of N.Y. v. County of Oneida, N.Y., 414 U.S. 661, 667-669, 94 S.Ct. 772, 777-78, 39 L.Ed.2d 73; Creek Nation v. United States, 318 U.S. 629, 640, 63 S.Ct. 784, 789, 87 L.Ed. 1046; The New York Indians, 5 Wall [72 US] 761 [1866] ). It is apparent, therefore, that the true basis for denying the tribes access to State courts has been the doctrine of Indian dependency, as expressed in Johnson v. Long Is. R.R. Co., 162 N.Y. 462, 467-468, 56 N.E. 992, supra, that a tribe and its individual members "are regarded as the wards of the state, and generally speaking, possessed of only such rights to appear and litigate in courts of justice as are conferred upon them by statute". If the tribes are jural entities, the concept of dependency as a source of incapacity to sue is more readily amenable to reversal by a statute of general application, such as 25 U.S.C. § 233 or Indian Law § 5.

We find equally untenable defendants' contention that the statutory language and legislative history of 25 U.S.C. § 233 admits of no interpretation other than the exclusion of Indian tribes from the conferral of State court jurisdiction over the legal disputes of "Indians". First, it is by no means unprecedented for a statutory reference, even to "Indian" in the singular, to be interpreted generically to include Indian tribes, especially when important procedural benefits to Indians in litigation are being created (see, Wilson v. Omaha Indian Tribe, 442 U.S. 653, 655, 99 S.Ct. 2529, 2532, 61 L.Ed.2d 153).

Second, contrary to defendants' contention, the references to Indian tribes in the provisos to 25 U.S.C. § 233 are at least as, if not more, consistent with a legislative intent to permit tribes to litigate as such in New York courts than the opposite conclusion. The provisos to 25 U.S.C. § 233 guarantee that the statutory expansion of State court jurisdiction will not subject Indian reservation lands to State and local taxation, or subject such lands "or any Federal or State annuity in favor of Indians or Indian tribes, to execution on any judgment rendered in the State courts", or "[authorize] the alienation from any Indian nation, tribe, or band of Indians of any lands within any Indian reservation in the State of New York" (emphasis supplied). Thus, the historic Indian land title immunities were to be preserved, all of which were traditionally tribal in nature (see, Oneida Indian Nation of N.Y. v. County of Oneida, N.Y., supra, 414 U.S. at 667-670, 94 S.Ct. at 777-79)....