Number: RL34628
Title: The Indian Trust Fund Litigation: An Overview of Cobell v. Kempthorne
Authors: M. Maureen Murphy, American Law Division 
Abstract: On August 7, 2008, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia issued an opinion awarding $455.6 million in restitution to the plaintiffs in Cobell v. Kempthorne. The litigation has been before the courts since 1996. The dispute involves the federal government's alleged mismanagement of accounts held in trust for individual Indians. Central to this dispute is the duty of the Department of the Interior (DOI) to provide a historical accounting of the accounts. This duty has proven very difficult to fulfill, however, for a variety of reasons. In January 2008, the trial court reached the conclusion that DOI was unable to produce the required accounting and scheduled an evidentiary hearing on an appropriate remedy. That remedy, according to the August 7, 2008, ruling, is $455.6 million in restitution. The sum differed greatly from what the plaintiffs had sought - approximately $47 billion. In its ruling, the court rejected the plaintiffs' methodology of computing the amount owed to the trust beneficiaries and their additional claims for "benefit to the government" for funds not credited to the accounts of the beneficiaries. The court left for future determination the question of how the award is to be distributed among the members of the plaintiff class. The purpose of this report is to provide a brief background of the history leading up to the litigation, a review of the issues that have proven so difficult for the judiciary to resolve, and a brief description of the method used by the trial court to determine the amount of the restitution.
Pages: 14
Date: August 20, 2008