The longstanding Cobell suit in Washington federal district court has been reassigned to former Chief Judge Thomas Hogan following the retirement of Senior Judge James Robertson. Robertson’s retirement was effective June 1. Chief Judge Royce Lamberth of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia will take over Robertson’s criminal cases, and the civil cases will be distributed to other judges.
Robertson could not immediately be reached for comment. Robertson, who picked up the Cobell case in 2006, was praised for his work in the contentious litigation, guiding government attorneys and the plaintiffs’ lawyers toward a settlement, which was announced last December. Lead plaintiff Elouise Cobell first filed suit in 1996. The government has agreed to pay $1.41 billion to class members who sought an historical accounting of royalty money the federal government held in trust.
The government also wants to set up a $2 billion land consolidation fund. Since the settlement announcement, the deadline for necessary authorization from Congress was pushed back several times. Last week, the House approved the necessary funding. The plaintiffs’ lawyers, including a team from Kilpatrick Stockton and D.C. solo practitioner Dennis Gingold, agreed to a June 15 extension to give the U.S. Senate time to examine and vote on the legislation.
At a hearing in April, Robertson expressed frustration about the inactivity on Capitol Hill as he urged members of Congress to approve the legislation. Robertson’s remarks in court were the first he made in public about the settlement. “The need for Congress to act is real,” Robertson said. “Until or unless Congress acts, the lawyers who have devoted themselves to this case for 15 years on both sides are on hold, and, more importantly, all of Indian country is on hold. And I don’t want to be too melodramatic about this, but justice is on hold.”
Judge Hogan, who was appointed to the bench in 1982 and became chief in 2001, will preside over the fairness hearing in the Cobell case, giving class members a chance to support, or dispute, the terms of the agreement.
No date is set for the fairness hearing. Robertson’s retirement does not create a vacancy since he had already taken senior status. Venable partner Robert Wilkins was nominated May 20 to replace Robertson, who was appointed to the federal trial bench in 1994. Robertson practiced at Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering (now Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr) between 1965 and 1969 and from 1972 until his appointment to the bench. He is a former president of the District of Columbia Bar and co-chair of the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.
Blog of the Legal Times: Posted by Mike Scarcella on June 02, 2010 at 12:25
Jodi Rave
*Ms. Rave is an Individual Indian Money account holder and landowner on the Fort Berthold Reservation in North Dakota. She won the University of Nebraska Sorensen Award for her reporting on the Cobell lawsuit as well as the Nebraska Associated Press award for enterprise reporting for her series on the management of Indian lands. Her writings on the Cobell suit are also included in“The Authentic Voice: The Best Reporting on Race and Ethnicity,” a book based on award-winning journalism stories from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. Additionally, Ms. Rave is the first, and only, American Indian woman awarded a Nieman Fellowship for journalism at Harvard University.