Three Affiliated Tribes of Fort Berthold Reservation v. Wold Engineering, P.C.

• Citation: 364 N.W.2d 98
• Decision Date: 13 March 1985
• Docket Number: No. 10172,10172
• Court: United States State Supreme Court of North Dakota
• Parties: THREE AFFILIATED TRIBES OF the FORT BERTHOLD RESERVATION, Plaintiff and Appellant, v. WOLD ENGINEERING, P.C., a North Dakota Professional Corporation, Defendant, Third-Party Plaintiff and Appellee, v. SCHMIT, SMITH & RUSH, Third-Party Defendant. Civ.

Page 98

364 N.W.2d 98

THREE AFFILIATED TRIBES OF the FORT BERTHOLD RESERVATION, Plaintiff and Appellant, v. WOLD ENGINEERING, P.C., a North Dakota Professional

Corporation, Defendant, Third-Party Plaintiff and Appellee, v. SCHMIT, SMITH & RUSH, Third-Party Defendant.

Civ. No. 10172.

Supreme Court of North Dakota.

March 13, 1985.

As amended March 21 and April 1, 1985.

John O. Holm, argued, Dickinson, and Raymond Cross, New Town, for plaintiff and appellant.

Gary H. Lee, Minot, argued, Bosard, McCutcheon & Rau, Minot, for defendant, third-party plaintiff and appellee.

Pringle & Herigstad, Minot, for third-party defendant; did not participate.

ERICKSTAD, Chief Justice.

On July 1, 1982, this Court, in a unanimous opinion, affirmed the judgment of the District Court of Ward County. Three Affiliated Tribes of the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation (Affiliated) had appealed from a judgment of that court dismissing the complaint for lack of subject matter jurisdiction. The basic issue on appeal was whether or not the state court had subject matter jurisdiction over a civil action arising within the exterior boundaries of the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation in which Affiliated was the plaintiff and the defendants were non-Indians. Three Affiliated Tribes of the Fort Berthold Reservation v. Wold Engineering, P.C., 321 N.W.2d 510 (N.D.1982).

Following an application for a writ of certiorari from the United States Supreme Court, that Court granted the writ, received briefs from the parties, heard arguments of counsel, and on a seven-to-two basis on May 29, 1984, vacated the judgment of our Court and remanded the case for further proceedings not inconsistent with its opinion.

In its opinion, the majority, speaking through Mr. Justice Blackmun, said:

"In sum, then, no federal law or policy required the North Dakota courts to forgo the jurisdiction recognized in Vermillion [ v. Spotted Elk, 85 N.W.2d 432 (N.D.1957)] in this case. If the North Dakota Supreme Court's jurisdictional ruling is to stand, it must be shown to rest on state rather than federal law.

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"If the state court has proceeded on an incorrect perception of federal law, it has been this Court's practice to vacate the judgment of the state court and remand the case so that the court may reconsider the state law question free of misapprehensions about the scope of federal law.

"Here, a careful reading of the North Dakota Supreme Court's opinion leaves us far from certain that the court's present interpretation of Chapter 27-19 does not rest on a misconception of federal law. In determining the role played by that court's understanding of federal law, we are guided by the jurisdictional principles that have come to govern our calculation of adequate and independent state grounds. In Michigan v. Long, 463 U.S. 1032, 103 S.Ct. 3469, 77 L.Ed.2d 1201 (1983), this Court ruled that 'when ... a state court decision fairly appears ... to be interwoven with the federal law, and when the adequacy and independence of any possible state law ground is not clear from the face of the opinion, we will accept as the most reasonable explanation that the state court decided the case the way it did because it believed that federal law required it to do so.' Id., at ----, 103 S.Ct., at 3476. Although petitioner's constitutional challenge to the North Dakota Supreme Court's judgment means that we do not face a question of our own jurisdiction, see Standard Oil Co. v. Johnson, 316 U.S., at 482-483, 62 S.Ct., [1168] at 1169 [86 L.Ed. 1611 (1942) ], we believe that the same general interpretive principles properly apply here. The North Dakota Supreme Court's opinion does state that the North Dakota Legislature 'totally disclaimed jurisdiction over civil causes of action arising on an Indian reservation,' but it adds that the legislature did so 'pursuant to Public Law 280,' '[u]nder the authority of Public Law 280,' and 'under explicit authority granted by Congress in the exercise of its federal power over Indians.' 321 N.W.2d, at 511-513." Three Affiliated Tribes of the Fort Berthold Reservation v. Wold Engineering, P.C., --- U.S. ----, ----, 104 S.Ct. 2267, 2276-77, 81 L.Ed.2d 113, 124-25 (1984).

In essence, what the United States Supreme Court is telling us is that the courts of our state have jurisdiction to try this dispute, because jurisdiction was acquired through the exercise of jurisdiction prior to the amendments of Public Law 280 by Congress in 1968, notwithstanding the contract between the United States and North Dakota created by Section 4, subdivision 2, of the Congressional Enabling Act, passed February 22, 1889, ¹ and the second part of Section 203 of Article XVI of the North Dakota Constitution as it read before amendment in 1958. ²

In other words, the Court is saying that by exercising jurisdiction in Vermillion v. Spotted Elk, 85 N.W.2d 432 (N.D.1957), a case involving a tort action brought by an Indian against another Indian, arising out of an automobile accident which occurred on a highway within the exterior boundaries of an Indian reservation in this state, our state courts acquired jurisdiction which was not affected by the amendments to Public Law 280 in 1968 by the enactment of the Indian Civil Rights Act (Pub.L. 90-284, Secs. 401, 402, 406, 82 Stat. 78-80, codified at 25 U.S.C. Secs. 1321, 1322, 1326), ³ notwithstanding that Section 1322 required the consent of the tribe occupying the particular Indian country, notwithstanding that in Williams v. Lee, 358 U.S. 217, 79 S.Ct. 269, 3 L.Ed.2d 251 (1959), the United States Supreme Court said that the Supreme Court of Arizona had no jurisdiction over an action on a debt arising on the Navajo Reservation, brought by a non-Indian against an Indian couple, and notwithstanding that the reasoning applied in Vermillion, that the Congressional Enabling Act and the disclaimer in Section 203 of Article XVI of the North Dakota Constitution did not constitute a reservation by the United States of exclusive jurisdiction over civil causes of action between Indians residing on the reservation, if the actions did not involve Indian lands, has been criticized as faulty.

In light of the mandate of the Supreme Court in this case, our first task on remand appears to be to determine the meaning of Chapter 27-19, N.D.C.C., the Indian Civil Jurisdiction Act enacted on March 2, 1963, by our state legislature.

We are reminded that in so doing we have in the past construed state statutes:

"[T]o avoid potential state and federal constitutional problems, see, e.g., State v. Kottenbroch, 319 N.W.2d 465, 473 ([N.D.]1982); Paluck v. Board of County Comm'rs, 307 N.W.2d 852, 856 ([N.D.]1981); Grace Lutheran Church v. North Dakota Employment Security Bureau, 294 N.W.2d 767, 772 ([N.D.] 1980); North American Coal Corp. v. Huber, 268 N.W.2d 593, 596 ( [N.D.] 1978); Tang v. Ping, 209 N.W.2d 624, 628 ( [N.D.]1973)." --- U.S. at ----, 104 S.Ct. at 2278, 81 L.Ed.2d at 126.

Although we normally would not attempt to construe a statute unless it were ambiguous, and an ambiguity in Chapter 27-19 is not obvious on its face, because the United States Supreme Court is of the view that we may have been influenced in our decision as to both its meaning and its constitutionality because of our erroneous view of Public Law 280 and its amendments, we shall in this case attempt to determine the meaning of Chapter 27-19 through a study of the legislative history of that chapter.

It is interesting to note that Chapter 27-19 resulted from an interim study of the North Dakota Legislative Research Committee conducted in the interim between the 1961 and 1963 legislative sessions.

The report to the Thirty-eighth Legislative Assembly (the 1963 session of the Legislature) discloses that a subcommittee on Indian affairs was appointed pursuant to passage of Senate Concurrent Resolution "R-R" and House Concurrent Resolution "T-1" of the Thirty-seventh Legislative Assembly. A review of the report to the Thirty-eighth Legislative Assembly discloses the care in which the subcommittee acted. ⁴

It is particularly interesting to note that in Part III of the report of the full legislative research committee to the Legislature, the assertion is made under part 1(i) that the assumption of civil jurisdiction by the state would provide, among other things, a tool for the accomplishment of eleven different objectives, including enforcement of contracts between Indians and non-Indians and providing a tribunal for trying tort actions. ⁵

The bill prepared by the full legislative committee to accomplish the objectives as they related to civil jurisdiction was Senate Bill 30. This bill as originally introduced consisted of only six sections. The main section was Section 1 whereby the state was to unilaterally accept exclusive jurisdiction over all civil causes of action which arise on Indian reservations. ⁶

When the bill was first considered by the State and Federal Government Committee to which it had been referred, Representative Harold Hofstrand, the chairman of the subcommittee on Indian affairs of the Legislative Research Committee which had conducted the interim study, appeared before the Senate State and Federal Government Committee to request that a hearing be set to which should be invited the Indian tribal chairmen and the members of the Indian Affairs Commission.

When the public hearing was held, a number of Indian leaders, both within and without the State of North Dakota, appeared to oppose the passage of the bill, some asserting that civil jurisdiction should not be assumed by the state without a vote of the Indian people ⁷ and, apparently, as a result thereof, the bill was amended to provide for acceptance of civil jurisdiction by the state upon acceptance by the Indian citizens as provided in Sections 2 and 5 of the bill as it finally passed the Legislature. ⁸

In light of this background and the seeming intent of the Legislature to...