Free Joint Status Report - District Court of Federal Claims - federal

Case 1:02-cv-00024-FMA

Document 109

Filed 11/16/2005

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UNITED STATES COURT OF FEDERAL CLAIMS

PUEBLO OF LAGUNA, Plaintiff, v. UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Defendant.

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No. 02-24L Judge Francis M. Allegra

JOINT STATUS REPORT Plaintiff, the Pueblo of Laguna, and Defendant, the United States, (the "parties"), hereby jointly report to the Court regarding their progress on an indexation plan to be submitted to the Court and on other matters. I. INDEXATION PLAN STATUS AND DOCUMENT PRODUCTION As has been reported to the Court and as discussed below, counsel for the parties have agreed to focus primarily on Jicarilla Apache Nation v. United States, No. 02-25L, before turning to this matter. Nevertheless, since the last status report filed on April 1, 2005,1 the parties have continued to work on document production and indexation issues. In many respects, production has subsumed indexation as the parties move forward with an Alternative Dispute Resolution ("ADR") approach, as discussed further below.

After having regularly filed status reports more frequently than the every-sixmonths schedule required by the Court's Order of December 13, 2002, the parties now propose, with the Court's approval, to return to the six-month schedule (May 16 and November 16) set out in that Order. 1

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Defendant has produced some 3,500 documents to Plaintiff, most of which were marked by Plaintiff for production at Defendant's facilities in Albuquerque during 2004. In addition, Defendant updated the format of CD-ROMs produced by Defendant and Arthur Andersen LLP in 1996 and provided the updated version, which can run on current operating systems, to Plaintiff. These documents are in the form of electronic images produced in a Concordance database format. Plaintiff has requested and Defendant has agreed to provide Optical Character Recognition ("OCR") text for all documents produced to provide for greater search capability. Defendant has also agreed to provide to Plaintiff any additional coding it may do on records already produced. Defendant's production of the records requested by Laguna will be ongoing, but the Jicarilla records have been given higher priority. In addition, a portion of the approximately 83,000 documents produced by the United States in the Jicarilla case are of a general nature and may be used in the Laguna case as well. The parties have agreed in principle that such records of general applicability may be used in either of the two cases. Plaintiff is beginning the process of scanning and coding relevant records in its possession. At an appropriate time in the context of the ADR process discussed below, Plaintiff will begin making those records available to Defendant. The parties expect that the efforts regarding indexation in the Jicarilla matter will inform the indexation issues in this matter as well, although there may be repositories that are unique to Laguna's trust funds and resources or unique needs may be identified that will require different indexation strategies. If the parties are unable to agree upon reasonable indexation methods, they will of course bring any unresolved issues to the attention of the

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Court. Given the wide range of indexation issues from site to site, the parties will continue to report to the Court on their efforts and, when practicable, prepare a formal indexation plan as ordered by the Court in its Order of March 19, 2004. II. ALTERNATIVE DISPUTE RESOLUTION The parties and the Settlement Judge, the Honorable Eric G. Bruggink, executed an ADR Agreement in this matter on May 19, 2005. An ADR CAPO was entered by this Court on June 2, 2005. The parties are optimistic that if the first issue subject to ADR negotiations in the Jicarilla matter is resolved successfully, the methodologies will be of substantial use in a similar undertaking in this matter. The parties will keep the Court and the Settlement Judge apprised of further discussions in that regard. The parties will also provide a status report to the Settlement Judge in the next several weeks. The parties shall report further to the Court on these matters of indexation and production of documents on or before May 16, 2006 unless the Court orders otherwise or unless intervening events warrant an earlier report. III. NATIONAL ARCHIVES AND RECORDS ADMINISTRATION In September of 2005, counsel for the United States informed Jicarilla counsel that National Archives and Records Administration ("NARA") staff members had advised Justice attorneys of recent incidents which occurred at NARA, in which permanent records were found discarded in waste receptacles in non-public areas of the facility. The records included historical documents from the Department of Veterans Affairs, the U.S. Army, the War Department, the Navy Department, and the Department of the Interior. Among the discarded documents were some files of the Consolidated Chippewa, including correspondence from the

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1940's and 1950's, heirship files, timber sale contracts, and land patents. Additionally, a file labeled "Blackfeet" was found which contained an Annual Credit Report of the Northern Plains Indian Crafts Association. NARA has not identified any discarded Jicarilla, Laguna, or other Native American documents. Counsel for the United States has offered Jicarilla counsel access to all of the documents implicated in the aforenoted incidents. Counsel for the United States will provide additional relevant information concerning the foregoing events as it becomes available. Respectfully submitted this 16th day of November, 2005.

s/ Alan R. Taradash by s/ Donald H. Grove _____________________________ Alan R. Taradash Nordhaus Law Firm, LLP 405 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Ave. NE Albuquerque, NM 87102-3541 telephone: 505-243-4275 facsimile: 505-243-4464

Attorney of Record for Plaintiff

s/ Robert Rodrigues by s/ Donald H. Grove _____________________________ Robert Rodrigues U.S. Department of Justice Environment and Natural Resources Division General Litigation Section P.O. Box 663 Washington, DC 20044-0663 telephone: 202-305-0484 facsimile: 202-305-0506 Attorney of Record for Defendant

Thomas J. Peckham Daniel I.S.J. Rey-Bear Deidre A. Lujan Nordhaus Law Firm, LLP 405 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr Ave NE Albuquerque, NM 87102 telephone 505-243-4275 Of Counsel

Martin LaLonde Laura Maroldy Nicolette Romano U.S. Department of Justice Environment and Natural Resources Division General Litigation Section P.O. Box 663 Washington, DC 20044-0663

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Donald H. Grove Nordhaus Law Firm, LLP Suite 801 1401 K Street NW Washington, DC 20005 telephone 202-530-1270 Of Counsel

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