Mitchell v. United States

10 Cl. Ct. 63, 1986 U.S. Claims LEXIS 870
CourtUnited States Court of Claims
DecidedMay 22, 1986
DocketNos. 772-71, 773-71, 774-71 and 775-71
StatusPublished
Cited by34 cases

This text of 10 Cl. Ct. 63 (Mitchell v. United States) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering United States Court of Claims primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Mitchell v. United States, 10 Cl. Ct. 63, 1986 U.S. Claims LEXIS 870 (cc 1986).

Opinion

OPINION

WIESE, Judge.

The plaintiffs in these consolidated actions are allottees of land located on the Quinault Reservation. As here assembled, this group includes approximately 1,500 individuals (in each of the consolidated actions), the Quinault Tribe, and the Quinault Allottees Association, an unincorporated association organized in early 1968 to promote the interests of the allottees of the Quinault Reservation. Their claims, first filed in the former United States Court of Claims more than fifteen years ago, seek damages based on allegations of mismanagement by the Government in its role as trustee of the plaintiffs’ timber resources and related property interests.

The litigation has been the subject of a number of decisions by the Court of Claims as well as the Supreme Court1 and the end is not yet in sight. Currently the court has before it defendant’s motion to dismiss, on grounds of lack of timeliness, that portion of plaintiffs’ claims involving events occurring prior to October 1965, i.e., more than six years prior to the commencement of the actions. Plaintiffs oppose the motion, contending that the timeliness of their suits presents genuine issues of material fact the resolution of which necessarily demands that a trial be held. After consideration of the parties' extensive documentary submissions, their recitations of fact and briefs on the law, and the further elaboration of their positions during oral argument, the court has concluded that the motion for partial summary judgment should be granted. The court’s views on the matter, expressed at the conclusion of the oral argument, are set forth herein in more detail.

I.

The Quinault Reservation was established by Executive Order in 1873 pursuant to a Treaty between the United States and the Quinault and Quileute Indians. Treaty of Olympia, July 1, 1855, 12 Stat. 971. Between 1905 and 1935, the entire Reservation was allotted to individual Indians pursuant to the Indian General Allotment Act of 1887, 25 U.S.C. §§ 331-358 (1982).

The Reservation lands comprise approximately 200,000 acres, most of which are heavily forested. Management of this vast timber resource is entrusted to the Secretary of the Interior: various federal statutes assign to him the responsibility of arranging for the sale of the allottees’ timber, providing for distribution of the sale proceeds to the individual allottees, and insuring the continuity of the forest and the income therefrom through adherence to principles of sustained yield. The plaintiffs’ grievances lie in the manner in which the Secretary has discharged these duties.

To explain: the Bureau of Indian Affairs (“BIA”) began logging the Indians’ timber under long-term logging contracts in 1920. From that date through 1957, there were 12 contracts that covered logging on the southern half of the Reservation. On the northern half of the Reservation logging [66]*66was completed over the period 1950 through 1986—this under two contracts covering the areas known as the Taholah and Crane Creek Units. Plaintiffs’ contend that the Secretary mismanaged these logging contracts in several respects. Their specific claims are the following;

(1) Stumpage Claim—Plaintiffs charge that the Secretary, though obliged to do so, failed to obtain fair market value for the timber that was sold over the period 1920 to current date. They say that the inadequate value which they received was due to the fact that the contracts’ initial prices were set too low, that adjustments in those prices over the contracts’ terms consistently lagged behind the corresponding changes in market prices, and, finally, that the loggers were allowed costs (offsets to the log prices) that were excessive and/or improper.

(2) High-Grading Claim2—The Taholah and Crane Creek contracts contemplated that the logger was to pay a price based upon the average grade of the timber as it stood prior to the start of logging. Since the average grade of each species in each unit was not known in advance, the BIA estimated the grades for purposes of determining stumpage prices. In the early years of the Taholah and Crane Creek Contracts (1950-1956), the loggers were cutting the better grade timber and paying, as the contracts contemplated, an average price per species. This practice, known as “high-grading”, was not prohibited by the contracts. Viewed in the context of a long-term contract, the practice was not harmful to the allottees for, in the contracts’ later stages, the allottees could expect to receive an average price for below-average timber. Plaintiffs’ claims arise out of the fact that, in 1964, the BIA switched from the concept of payment based upon an estimated unit-wide average grade per species to payment based upon average actual grades as reflected in then-current timber harvests. This switch, say plaintiffs, worked to the loggers great advantage because they enjoyed the early benefits of high-grading while escaping the corresponding downside of the harvest cycle when the average price would exceed the average grade.

(3) Pick-up Scale Claim3—Among the BIA’s responsibilities under the logging contracts was the duty to insure that the logger had removed all merchantable timber from the harvest site. The BIA was to scale {i.e., measure) any timber left behind and charge its value to the logger. Plaintiffs claim that the BIA was deficient in the performance of this duty with the result that much merchantable timber remained on site for which the allottees never received payment.

(4) Regeneration Claim—As noted, the Secretary has a statutory duty to manage the Quinault Reservation timber on a sustained yield basis. 25 U.S.C. §§ 406(a), 466 (1982). Plaintiffs charge that, contrary to the requirements of sound forestry practices, the Secretary failed to introduce artificial regeneration (through seeding or planting) on thousands of acres of cut-over land whose natural regrowth had been destroyed or hindered either by fire or by excessive accumulation of slash (i.e., cutting debris). As a result of these alleged failures to promote timely regeneration, plaintiffs claim that many areas in both halves of the Reservation remain inadequately restocked to this day and perhaps may never recover from the mismanagement that has occurred.

It is evident from this brief identification of the claims in question that much of what is being complained about involves acts and omissions on the part of the BIA that oc-. curred more than six years prior to the initiation of the litigation. It is on that ground that the Government now moves for dismissal. As noted, plaintiffs oppose for reasons that we come to shortly.

II.

Title 28 of the United States Code provides that every claim over which the [67]*67United States Claims Court has jurisdiction shall be barred “unless the petition thereon is filed within six years after such claim first accrues”. 28 U.S.C. § 2501 (1982). In the traditional formulation of the accrual rule, a claim is said to first accrue when “all events” have transpired that “fix the Government’s alleged liability, entitling the claimant to demand payment and sue here for his money.” Nager Electric Co. v. United States, 177 Ct.Cl.

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Bluebook (online)
10 Cl. Ct. 63, 1986 U.S. Claims LEXIS 870, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/mitchell-v-united-states-cc-1986.