Copyright © 2000 NLThomas
All Rights Reserved

Request to Re-Open 1999 Trial Cites Repeated Government Misconduct, Destruction of Evidence, Failure to Fulfill Promises

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Indian plaintiffs asked a federal judge today to reconsider his 1999 decision giving the Interior Department “one last opportunity” to reform the dysfunctional individual Indian trust account system, and instead appoint a special master to force the U.S. government into compliance with its trust responsibilities.

In a motion filed today in U.S. District Court, plaintiffs in the Cobell v. Babbitt class action said that despite promises to Judge Royce C. Lamberth last year, Interior officials have repeatedly violated the judge’s orders to preserve and produce evidence in the case and have misled and deceived the court about their lack of progress in implementing a highly touted new data management system.

“It is now evident that the glowing descriptions of trust reform efforts supposedly under way which were presented at the trial were gravely misleading,” the motion said. “It is equally clear that no real trust reform is being accomplished.”

“One of the reasons we asked for a special master in Trial One is that we predicted this would happen – that they wouldn’t implement trust reform,” said Elouise Cobell, the lead plaintiff. “We’ve been through this history that told us we wouldn’t end up with an accounting system. The government’s pattern is that they aren’t going to do it on their own, and they get away with it forever and ever. Nobody has ever held the United States accountable. When the judge said ‘one more chance,’ I got goose bumps because even though the Trial One decision was a good one, we could see through it like a crystal ball. If they weren’t forced to do it – if we didn’t have the court – we’d be back to square one, even with the money allocated by Congress. The Administration just seems to be in denial.”

Lamberth presided over a trial on the trust reform issue in June and July 1999, and ruled last December that the government had breached its trust responsibilities to approximately 500,000 individual Indian trust account beneficiaries. In his ruling, Lamberth gave the Interior Department its “last opportunity” to reform the system itself. “Defendants are but one step away from earning more involved court oversight over the…trust, such as a Special Master,” the judge said.

Today’s motion also cited an April 4, 2000 hearing at which Lamberth said, “This entire fiasco is vivid proof to this court that [Interior] Secretary [Bruce] Babbitt and Assistant Secretary [Kevin] Gover have still failed to make the kind of efforts that are going to be required to ever make trust reform a reality,” adding that “in baseball terms that hopefully the defendants can understand, the Court considers this to be Strike One since the Court’s December ruling.”

“We submit that Strikes Two and Three – if not more – have now taken place,” the plaintiffs said in today’s motion.

Despite “repeated, sometimes indignant assurances” by Interior’s lawyers that the department was following the judge’s order to preserve evidence in the case, including e-mails, these turned out to be “baseless representations,” the motion said. In particular, it noted that only three days after a Nov. 9, 1998 order by Lamberth to produce evidence, including e-mails, Interior’s Solicitor General, Ed Cohen, “expressly authorized the Solicitor’s Office to resume routine destruction of [e-mail] backup tapes.” Interior’s attorneys then waited until May 20, 1999 to inform the court of the violation.

The motion also charged that Interior officials’ glowing references to TAAMS (the Trust Asset and Accounting Management System) during the 1999 trial were misleading and in some cases false. “In fact, defendants knew TAAMS was loaded with ‘dummy data’ during [the trial] and knew even before that trial was over that there were grave problems with TAAMS,” the motion said.

“In other words, during the last weeks of the trial itself and the period of filing and coordination of proposed findings and conclusions, defendants knew already that TAAMS was in serious trouble and that the representations made to the court during the trial were indefensible,” according to the motion.

For more information contact, Philip Smith, by phone 202-661-6350 or e-mail:info@indiantrust.com