Pueblo of Santo Domingo v. United States

54 Fed. Cl. 240, 2002 U.S. Claims LEXIS 267, 2002 WL 31317326
CourtUnited States Court of Federal Claims
DecidedOctober 16, 2002
DocketNos. 355-A, 355-C, 355-D, 355-E, 355-G
StatusPublished
Cited by1 cases

This text of 54 Fed. Cl. 240 (Pueblo of Santo Domingo v. United States) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering United States Court of Federal Claims primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Pueblo of Santo Domingo v. United States, 54 Fed. Cl. 240, 2002 U.S. Claims LEXIS 267, 2002 WL 31317326 (uscfc 2002).

Opinion

OPINION

BASKIR, Judge.

Pending before the Court in this Indian Claims case, originally filed in 1951 and settled in 2001, is the Plaintiffs Motion for Award of Attorneys’ Fees and Expenses.

Pursuant to the Court’s Rules, each of the attorneys who filed a fees claim in this case served the pleadings upon the Tribal Council of the Santo Domingo Pueblo Tribe of Indians (“Pueblo of Santo Domingo” or “Pueblo”). The Tribal Council has not separately filed an objection to any of the attorneys’ claims or the proposed allocation of fees.

The attorneys are seeking fees and expenses pursuant to their work only on No. 355, sub-dockets A, C, D, E and G. After he [242]*242entered judgment in No. 355 — B, F and H, Judge Bohdan A. Futey granted the attorneys’ various motions for fees and expenses for their work on those portions of the case, for the full 10 percent.

We grant the Plaintiffs motion. This Opinion will first discuss the background of this case and the Court’s authority to consider this motion, before setting forth the specific sums owed to the Plaintiffs current and former counsel. We discuss these matters at length because of the administrative and legal uncertainty involved in effectuating the matter of attorneys fees in this case.

I. Introduction

A. Historical Background

The Pueblo have inhabited the Rio Grande River Valley near the confluence of the Rio Grande River and the Galisteo River since before the arrival of Spanish colonists in the late 16th Century. In 1689, the Spanish Government issued a land grant to the Pueblo. Unfortunately, that grant, known as the Santo Domingo Land Grant, did not encompass all of the Pueblo’s native lands. In 1748, the Pueblo purchased this additional land — approximately 50,000 acres — from the Spanish, and the deed that memorialized this transaction became known as the Diego Gallegos Land Grant.

Pursuant to the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo (Treaty), signed in 1848, which ended the Mexican War, the United States acquired sovereignty over a vast southwestern territory, including the Pueblo’s land. While the Treaty recognized the Santo Domingo Land Grant, it did not specifically include the Diego Gallegos Land Grant. Consequently, the United States, the State of New Mexico, and private landowners did not recognize the Pueblo’s title to that tract of land.

A 1907 re-survey of the initial Federal survey that occurred at the conclusion of the Mexican War revealed that the correct boundary of the Pueblo’s land actually included the second grant, the Diego Gallegos Land Grant, as well as two other Spanish land grants. In 1928, Congress established the Pueblo Lands Board to resolve the conflicting claims to this land, which totaled about 80,000 acres. The Lands Board was not successful in reaching a compromise. There the matter stood for a time.

B. Procedural Background

The Pueblo filed three lawsuits against various public and private defendants to settle this dispute. The instant case was initiated in 1951, when the Pueblo filed suit against the United States before the Indian Claims Commission (ICC), seeking monetary damages for trespass, lost use, and breach of the “fair and honorable dealings” provision in the Indian Claims Commission Act of 1946 (ICCA).

The case was litigated before the ICC for 27 years without resolution. The Commission was dissolved in 1978, see Pub.L. 94-465, 90 Stat.1990, and the ease was transferred to this Court’s predecessor, the former United States Court of Claims, on October 18, 1978, under the ICC’s original docket number, 355, pursuant to Pub.L. 95-69, 91 Stat. 273.

The case was assigned to Claims Court Trial Judge Judith Ann Yanello. On October 1, 1982, pursuant to Section 403(d) of the Federal Courts Improvements Act of 1982, Pub.L. 97-164, 96 Stat. 46, 28 U.S.C. § 171, the case was transferred to the current United States Court of Federal Claims, but remained with Judge Yanello. Seven years later, on July 13, 1987, the case was reassigned to Judge Futey.

Throughout this litigation, the Pueblo had several attorneys of record. Mr. Frank E. Karelsen, III, represented the Pueblo from 1951 until May 13,1980. He was replaced by Mr. Thomas E. Leubben, who served until August 29, 1985. The present attorney of record, Mr. Richard W. Hughes, represented the Pueblo from August 30, 1985 until January 3, 1989, when he was replaced by Mr. Scott E. Borg. The Pueblo re-appointed Mr. Hughes as counsel on September 25, 1995. In addition to these attorneys, each counsel has represented to the Court that they in turn employed a number of associate and contract attorneys as well as a multitude of experts to work on the case.

We will not recount the entire procedural history of this complex case, but we pause [243]*243here to note the unique case management procedure Judge Yanello adopted in 1978. In order to handle the multiple and overlapping land grants, the difficult and arcane issues of treaty and historical deed interpretation, and the takings, mineral and water rights claims, Judge Yanello divided the case into eight different proceedings, assigning sub-docket case numbers for each. Accordingly, the litigation was assigned Case Nos. 355-A through 355-H, and the litigants and Court worked through each of the different dockets in turn. Along the way, a few of the sub-dockets were settled by the parties. On July 26,1988, Judge Futey entered judgment for the Plaintiff in No. 355-B, in the amount of $100,000.00; in No. 355-F, in the amount of $1,560,572.30; and in No. 355-H, in the amount of $40,000.00.

Accordingly, when this case was re-assigned to the undersigned judge on January 27, 1999, the unresolved claims included those in Nos. 355-A, C, D, E, and G.

II. Settlement of the Pueblo’s Claims

After 50 years of often intense litigation and negotiation, several lengthy published opinions from the ICC, this Court, and two appellate courts, and even a denied petition for a writ of certiorari to the Supreme Court, the parties reached a global settlement agreement in 2000. That the parties were able to reach a negotiated settlement in this 250-year-old dispute was remarkable, and it required the passage of legislation by Congress to complete it. As noted by the Committee Report accompanying Senate Bill S. 2917, the “Santo Domingo Pueblo Land Claims Settlement Act of 2000” (Settlement Act):

The overlapping land grants, surveys and mis-surveys of [Pueblo] lands on both sides of the Rio Grande River, the lack of a Federal survey of the Gallegos Grant, and the Pueblo Lands Board’s decisions gave rise to an array of competing claims to title to land by Indians and non-Indians. These claims have been asserted in numerous lawsuits, three of which encompass the most significant title disputes involving the lands of the Pueblo of Santo Domingo.

The agreement called for the ratification and implementation of the Settlement Act, which became law on November 1, 2000. In pertinent part, the Settlement Act, now codified at 25 U.S.C. § 1777

Free access — add to your briefcase to read the full text and ask questions with AI

Related

Oneida Indian Nation v. County of Oneida
802 F. Supp. 2d 395 (N.D. New York, 2011)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
54 Fed. Cl. 240, 2002 U.S. Claims LEXIS 267, 2002 WL 31317326, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/pueblo-of-santo-domingo-v-united-states-uscfc-2002.