Opinion
Civil Action No. 04-0283 (RCL).
March 9, 2005
MEMORANDUM AND ORDER
This matter comes before the Court on the defendants' Motion [4] to Transfer Case to the U.S. Court of Federal Claims. In that motion, the defendants argue: (1) that this Court lacks subject matter jurisdiction over the plaintiff's claims in this case; and (2) that the existence of two related cases involving the same parties in the Court of Federal Claims ("CFC") — Osage Nation v. United States, Docket No. 00-169L, and Osage Nation v. United States, Docket No. 99-550L — demonstrates that the plaintiff may find adequate relief in that court for its claims lodged here. Upon consideration of the defendants' motion, the opposition thereto, the reply brief, the applicable law, and the entire record herein, the Court concludes that the defendants' motion will be denied. This memorandum briefly sets forth the basis of the Court's conclusion.
Initially, it should be noted that the Court addressed identical arguments to those advanced in the defendants' present motion in The Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs Reservation of Oregon v. Norton, et al., Civil Action No. 02-2040 (RCL). There, as here, the defendants filed a motion to transfer the case to the CFC, citing this Court's lack of subject matter jurisdiction and the plaintiff's involvement in a related case in the CFC as appropriate grounds for the transfer. See The Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs Reservation of Oregon v. Norton, et al., Civil Action No. 02-2040 (RCL), Def.'s Mot. to Transfer to CFC, Docket No. 7, at 1. The Court denied the defendants' motion, see id., Order issued Sept. 29, 2003, Docket No. 21, relying on its prior resolution of the legal issues underlying the defendants' jurisdictional arguments in its December 21, 1999 Memorandum Opinion in Cobell v. Babbitt. See 91 F. Supp. 2d 1, 24 — 31 (D.D.C. 1999). Furthermore, the D.C. Circuit approved this Court's disposition of those legal questions in Cobell v. Norton. See 240 F.3d 1081, 1094 — 95 (D.C. Cir. 2001). For the reasons discussed in these prior opinions, the Court concludes that it has subject matter jurisdiction over the plaintiff's claims in this case, as they are identical, for jurisdictional purposes, to those at issue inCobell and Confederated Tribes.
The defendants contend, however, that the case should be transferred regardless of this Court's established jurisdiction over claims of this type because the plaintiff may receive an adequate remedy for the injuries it complains of in this Court at the conclusion of litigation in the plaintiff's related cases pending in the CFC. This argument, however, is ultimately incorrect. Importantly, the defendants request transfer of this case pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1631, which, the Eighth Circuit has explained, "confer[s] upon federal courts general transfer powerto cure a want of jurisdiction." Hempstead County Nev. County Project v. EPA, 700 F.2d 459, 462 (8th Cir. 1983) (emphasis added). Section 1631 provides, in relevant part, that "[w]henever a civil action is filed in a [federal] court . . .and that court finds that there is a want of jurisdiction, the court shall, if it is in the interest of justice, transfer such action. . . ." 28 U.S.C. § 1631 (emphasis added). The plain language of the statute makes clear that a finding of a lack of subject matter jurisdiction over the case is a threshold requirement for transfer under this provision. See Mortensen v. Wheel Horse Prods., Inc., 772 F. Supp. 85, 89 (N.D.N.Y. 1991) (holding that "§ 1631 applies only to a case where the transferor court lacks subject matter jurisdiction"); Levy v. Pyramid Co. of Ithaca, 687 F. Supp. 48, 51 (N.D.N.Y. 1988) (analyzing the legislative history of § 1631 and concluding that a lack of subject matter jurisdiction was intended to be a prerequisite to transfer under that section).
Now the defendants' contention that the CFC cases afford the plaintiff an adequate alternative avenue to the remedies that they seek in this Court must be either: (1) an argument that this Court lacks subject matter jurisdiction in this case because of the existence of the related CFC cases; (2) a proposed additional basis for transfer under § 1631 aside from a lack of subject matter jurisdiction; or (3) an argument for why "justice requires" transfer to be weighed after the Court finds that it lacks subject matter jurisdiction. The first possibility was addressed and rejected, along with the defendants' other jurisdictional arguments, in the Cobell Opinions and theConfederated Tribes Order discussed above. The second possibility is flatly absurd in light of the plain language of § 1631. With respect to the third possibility, because the Court concludes that is has subject matter jurisdiction over the claims in this case, and thus that the defendants have failed to satisfy the threshold requirement for transfer under § 1631, the issue of whether transfer would be "in the interest of justice" need not be addressed here.
This is at least the third time that these same jurisdictional arguments have been advanced in this Court by the Department of the Interior, the principal defendant in this case, the Cobell case, and the Confederated Tribes case. And most recently, appealing two injunctions that this Court issued in theCobell case, Interior made the same or similar jurisdictional arguments in front of the D.C. Circuit, meaning that the Court of Appeals now shares with this Court the dubious distinction of having heard these same arguments on multiple occasions. Resolving those appeals in opinions issued December 3, 2004 and December 10, 2004, the Court of Appeals again acknowledged this Court's established subject matter jurisdiction over the claims in theCobell case, which are substantively indistinguishable from the plaintiff Osage Tribe's claims in this case. See Cobell v. Norton, 391 F.3d 251, 257 — 58 (D.C. Cir. Dec. 3, 2004); Cobell v. Norton, 392 F.3d 461, 470 — 73 (D.C. Cir. Dec. 10, 2004).
For the foregoing reasons, the Court concludes that the defendants have failed to make the necessary threshold showing under 28 U.S.C. § 1631 that this Court lacks subject matter jurisdiction over the plaintiff's claims in this case. Absent such a showing, transfer under § 1631 is inappropriate. Accordingly, it is hereby
ORDERED that the defendants' Motion [4] to Transfer Case to the U.S. Court of Federal Claims is DENIED.
SO ORDERED.