Free Notice (Other) - District Court of Federal Claims - federal

Case 1:00-cv-00169-ECH

Document 202

Filed 05/13/2005

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IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF FEDERAL CLAIMS THE OSAGE NATION AND/OR TRIBE OF INDIANS OF OKLAHOMA, ) ) ) Plaintiff, ) ) ) ) v. ) ) THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, ) ) Defendant. ) __________________________________________)

Electronically Filed May 13, 2005 No. 00-169 L Judge Emily C. Hewitt

THE OSAGE NATION'S SECOND NOTICE IDENTIFYING TRANCHE ONE BOXES FOR EXPEDITED DISCOVERY Pursuant to paragraph 1(e) of the Court's April 15, 2005 Order, the Osage Nation hereby files this second notice identifying tranche one documents and/or files for expedited discovery. In that Order, the Court stated that it would decide this action in two separate tranches. As defined in that Order, tranche one will encompass the Osage Nation's trust fund mismanagement claims falling within the parameters described in Shoshone Indian Tribe v. United States, 364 F.3d 1339, 1350 (Fed. Cir. 2004), for five oil and gas leases for six months. Trial for tranche one claims is scheduled to begin on December 5, 2005. In order to meet the trial date for tranche one claims, the April 15, 2005 Order establishes a number of interim deadlines for discovery on those claims. Among other things, the Order requires the Osage Nation to file a notice identifying to defendant any additional documents and/or

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files required to be produced to complete tranche one discovery.1 Under that Order, the Federal Government is required to produce those images to the Osage Nation on or before June 17, 2005.2 Based on its review to date, the Osage Nation has identified 36 (thirty-six) boxes and five oil and gas lease case files that contain one or more additional documents relevant to tranche one claims. In order to expedite the production process and reduce the burden on the Federal Government, the Osage Nation, between April 25, 2005, and May 6, 2005, reviewed all of the lease case files and all but two of the 36 boxes identified herein.3 During these reviews, the Osage Nation marked the particular documents that were relevant to tranche one. Consequently, these marked documents should be expedited through the imaging process, and produced on or before June 17, 2005. The 36 boxes identified by the Osage Nation as containing one or more additional documents relevant to tranche one claims have been identified in Exhibit A by the Accession Number, FRC Number, and Box Number contained in the Federal Government's Box Inventory Search System ("BISS") indices. For ease of reference, the Osage Nation has also given each box its own unique identification number. To assist the Federal Government in locating these boxes, the Osage Nation has indicated, by placing an asterisk beside the unique identification number for April 15, 2005 Order at ¶ 1(e). The Osage Nation recently served several discovery requests to which the Federal Government has not yet had an opportunity to respond. Consequently, this Notice does not cover documents that the Government has not yet identified as being responsive to those recent requests. 2 Id. at ¶ 1(f). 3 Two of the boxes identified on Exhibit A were previously reviewed by the Osage Nation as part of the Joint Discovery Project. At that time, the Osage Nation did not mark for imaging any documents in these boxes. Since that time, however, the Osage Nation has conducted several searches of the BISS indices and has identified these boxes as possibly containing information relevant to tranche one. Thus, the Osage Nation herein requests that they be made available for a second review, during which particular documents may be identified for expedited imaging. The Osage Nation will coordinate with Defendant to determine a mutually convenient date and time for this review.
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that box, those boxes that were also previously identified in the Osage Nation's First Notice Identifying Tranche One Discovery Boxes for Expedited Discovery, which was filed with the Court on April 6, 2005. Any such boxes are being identified again in this second notice because, since April 6, 2005, the Osage Nation has reviewed and marked additional documents relevant to tranche one that also should be expedited through the imaging process. Finally, for each box, the Osage Nation has provided an estimate of the total number of pages marked for imaging.4 All of this information is contained in Exhibit A. Similarly, the five oil and gas lease case files that the Osage Nation identified as being relevant to tranche one claims are set forth in Exhibit B. These case files were marked as priorities for tranche one discovery by the Osage Nation during their review at the Osage Agency that began on April 25, 2005, and concluded on April 28, 2005. During that review, the parties agreed on the legal descriptions for these five leases, which are commonly referred to as the North Burbank Unit, the North Avant Unit, the Stanley Stringer Unit, the East Hardy Unit, and the Osage Hominy Unit. The case file for each of these leases is identified in Exhibit B according to these common descriptions. The Osage Nation is prepared to confer with the Federal Government at any time to clarify the identification of a particular case file and/ or box included in the attached exhibits. In addition, the Osage Nation remains willing to coordinate and confer with the Federal Government to expedite this process further in any way possible.

For all but two of the boxes identified in Exhibit A, the Osage Nation has identified the particular documents in each box that should be imaged. In many cases, the designated documents are only a portion of the contents of the box and the total number of documents designated for expedited imaging in this notice is estimated to be less than 10,000 (ten thousand) pages.

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Dated this May 13, 2005

Respectfully submitted,

s/Wilson K. Pipestem WILSON K. PIPESTEM Pipestem Law Firm, P.C. 1333 New Hampshire Avenue, N.W. Washington, D.C. 20036 Telephone: (202) 419-3526 Fax: (202) 659-4931 [email protected] Attorney for Plaintiff Osage Nation

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