St. Louis Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal attorney Roger Heidenreich spent about 200 hours on a case whose award recently was upheld by a federal appeals court, but his firm won't see a dime.
In a June 26 opinion, the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a Sioux tribal court award of $750,000 for Ronnie and Lila Long, members of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe and co-owners of a ranch on the tribe's reservation in South Dakota.
The Longs had sued Plains Commerce Bank of Hoven, S.D., claiming the bank discriminated against them and withheld promised operating loans.
South Dakota native Heidenreich worked pro bono on the discrimination and breach of contract case with Washington University associate law Professor Steve Gunn, several of the university's law school students and tribal attorney Thomas Van Norman of Eagle Butte, S.D.
The withheld loan would have allowed the Longs to save the 500 cattle that died in blizzards in the brutal winter of 1996 and 1997, according to a press release from the law school. Because of the loss of the cattle, the Longs were unable to re-purchase land that had been deeded to the bank in return for canceling some debt and making additional loans to the ranch, according to the opinion, which was written by Judge Diana Murphy and signed by judges Roger Wollman and John Gibson. A tribal court jury awarded the Longs $750,000 plus interest and the right to purchase the 960 acres they continued to occupy. A federal district court sided with the Longs when the bank challenged the tribal court's jurisdiction.
The opinion and the case are about helping tribal members hang onto their land, Heidenreich said. "It's an important victory not only for the Longs, but for the tribe, to be able to adjudicate their commercial relationships," Heidenreich said.
The bank held that it did not discriminate, and that the tribal court did not have jurisdiction over it as a non-member of the tribe, said David Von Wald, an attorney with the Von Wald Law Offices in Hoven who represented the bank with attorneys from Minneapolis-based Lindquist & Vennum.
Plains Commerce Bank has not said whether it will try to have the matter taken up by the U.S. Supreme Court, Von Wald said.
If the bank does appeal, the Longs' lawyers may have a tough battle. The Longs' case is rare in that it met the narrow criteria for tribal court jurisdiction over non-members outlined in a 1981 Supreme Court ruling in Montana v. United States, Gunn said.
"The unique thing about the opinion is that it comes against a backdrop of Supreme Court hostility to the assertion of tribal court jurisdiction over non-members."
- Heather Cole
July 16, 2007
