Here is the opinion in Madewell v. Harrah’s (W.D. N.C.): DCT Order Dismissing Slip and Fall Claim
gaming
Cert Petition on Hoffman v. Sandia Resort and Casino
Available here, on Mr. Hoffman’s website. here:
UPDATE: Incidentally, Hoffman’s attorney apparently is the same Paul Livingston who challenged the Santa Fe Indian Market all those years ago in Livingston v. Ewing, known to (according to an anonymous source) “rant[] in local right wingnut rags about abolishing Indian law.”
Lower court materials here. Local TV coverage here, via Pechanga.
Questions presented:
1. Whether the doctrine of tribal immunity properly bars claims that an Indian Casino cheated a non-Indian gambler by refusing to pay a slot machine jackpot?
2. Whether the “property damage” under the waiver of immunity in Section 8 of the Tribal Gaming Compact applies only to physical damage to property?
As you might suspect, I give this petition very little chance. I would doubt any response is necessary. There’s no split in authority and the case isn’t important on a national level. As for question 1, I am always suspicious of claims that Indian casinos have cheated gamblers because casinos LOVE IT when there’s a jackpot — it means that everyone and their brother is going to show up at that casino to replicate the magic. And question 2 is just patently frivolous.
NYTs on Shinnecock Recognition
From the NYTs:
There’s no irony or attitude at the Shinnecock Nation Cultural Center and Museum, just the whaling artifacts, the carved elk on the front door, the portraits and memorabilia of a people whose history on Long Island goes back thousands of years.
Still, only a deity with a perverse sense of humor could have written the story of the Shinnecocks, which entered a new era on Tuesday when a 32-year legal effort culminated in the formal federal recognition of the tribe.
You could start with the locale: how the bays and beaches the Shinnecocks and their ancestors fished and nurtured for millennia morphed into not just the Hamptons, but some of the richest and snootiest precincts there. That left the Shinnecocks strangers in their own land, a largely poor tribe of 1,200 with an 800-acre reservation tucked amid the lime-green slacks, the $36 lobster roll (Silver’s on Main Street) and the perma-tan, perma-thin habitués of this playground of the seriously rich.
Then there’s been the long legal dance and periodic skirmishes over the tribe’s nuclear option: its threat to build a casino on the reservation that could have turned the standard East End gridlock into a graveyard of permanently immobilized Lexuses, Range Rovers and BMWs.
And now, with the economy still in the tank and development hard to come by, the outsiders at the banquet are the ones holding all the chips. The courting and wooing for what could be one of New York State’s biggest economic projects in many years have been going on quietly for some time.
But the action begins in earnest next month, when, 30 days after the designation, the tribe can start taking official steps to build what could be New York’s answer to Connecticut’s mega-casinos.
Reorganized Greektown Casino Investors Respond to Stupak
WASHINGTON – A week after U.S. Rep. Bart Stupak asked the federal Interior and Justice departments to put the brakes on the bankruptcy reorganization of Greektown Casino, a lawyer for the investors set to take control from the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians, said Stupak’s claims on behalf of the tribe should not be allowed to slow the process.
Allan Brilliant, a New York lawyer representing a group of private equity and hedge funds which will take ownership of the Detroit casino, said in his letter Tuesday that U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar should “disregard” Stupak’s request to look into the reorganization, saying the tribe’s “last-minute, baseless attempt to delay such exit (from bankruptcy) is detrimental to all parties that benefit from the revenues generated by the facility.”
Last week, Stupak – a Democrat from Menominee on the Upper Peninsula, where the Sault tribe is based – said Holder and Salazar should look into whether land held in trust by the federal government on behalf of a tribe can be handed over to investors without an act of Congress.
He said some of the land on Beaubien Street in Detroit where Greektown Casino is located was given to the federal government on the tribe’s behalf by private investors.
Hearing on Little River Band Off-Rez Gaming Compact Delayed
From Indianz:
A hearing on the off-reservation casino sought by the Little River Band of Ottawa Indians has been delayed.
The Michigan House Regulatory Reform Committee held an initial hearing on the project on May 26. Additional hearings were scheduled but they were canceled.
“I don’t get why they’re holding this up,” Rep. Doug Bennett (D), who supports the casino, told The Muskegon Chronicle.
The new hearing probably won’t be held until the end of this month or in early July, an aide to Rep. Bert Johnson, the chairman of the committee, told the paper. The location hasn’t been determined either although it will be held somewhere in the Muskegon area.
The tribe wants to build the casino at a former racetrack in Fruitport Township, near Muskegon. The site is about 80 miles from the tribe’s headquarters but it’s within the tribe’s nine-county service area.
The Saginaw Chippewa Tribe, the Nottawaseppi Huron Band of Potawatomi Indians and the Match-E-Be-Nash-She-Wish Band of Pottawatomi Indians oppose the project. They say the Little River Band violated the terms of the original Class III compact by not seeking approval from other tribes for an off-reservation casino.
Get the Story:
State House group to have casino proposal hearing here (The Muskegon Chronicle 6/15)
NIGC: 2009 Indian Gaming Revenues Stable (Actually, Slight Decline for the First Time)
Here is that press release.
Detailed revenue charts here.
Foxwoods Attorney Involved in Conflict of Interest Dispute with Penn. Judge
From How Appealing:
“Lawyer for court also aided Foxwoods; Jeffrey B. Rotwitt took casino cases before Justice Ronald D. Castille while working on the Family Court deal for him”: This article appears today in The Philadelphia Inquirer.
“Who Is Tracie Stevens?”
If confirmed as chair of the National Indian Gaming Commission, Tracie Stevens would become the first woman to lead the oversight body for the $27 billion Indian gaming industry.
A member of the Tulalip Tribes in Washington State, Stevens was born in Los Angeles, but returned to Tulalip as a child. In 1985, she became the first member of her immediate family to graduate high school, which she did in Yakima, Washington, in 1985. She began her professional career in the gaming industry in 1995 at her tribe’s casino (Quil Ceda Creek Casino), located north of Seattle. There, she worked in human resource management, employee recruitment and training, and operations planning and analysis, before becoming the Tulalip Casino’s executive director for strategic planning in 2001.
In 2003, she became a legislative policy analyst in the tribe’s government affairs office. She represented the Tulalips in negotiations to update gambling compacts between the state of Washington and all federally-recognized tribes in the state. She also lobbied state lawmakers on tribe-related bills, including a controversial measure in 2005 to allow the Tulalips to retain millions in sales tax revenue collected at Quil Ceda Village. The bill did not pass.
In 2006, Stevens was elevated to senior policy analyst, a position she held until 2009. Also in 2006, Stevens received a Bachelor of Arts degree in social sciences from the University of Washington-Seattle, an accomplishment that took many years, as she had to attend night school while working.
Sault Tribe Enlisted Stupak to Pressure Justice and Interior on Greektown Parcel
From the Soo Evening News:
The Sault Tribe of Chippewa Indians has gained a powerful ally in its bid to retain Greektown Casino as Congressman Bart Stupak (D-Menominee) has requested the U.S. Bankruptcy Court and the Michigan Gaming Control Board to postpone Chapter 11 reorganization.
In a three-page letter [20100609_GreektownCasino], Stupak urges the U.S. Department of the Interior and the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate if it is legally possible for the Sault Tribe to lose its real estate interest in Greektown Casino. Essentially, Stupak argued, that the 0.76 acre parcel located at 1010 Beaubien Street in the City of Detroit has been placed in federal trust and cannot be conveyed to another party without Congressional authorization.
“I seriously question the propriety and legality of a process in which the property conveyed to the United States in trust on behalf of the Tribe can be conveyed without authority from Congress and without full Tribal consent,” wrote Stupak, indicating it was his opinion that the parcel is owned by the federal government for the benefit and use of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians.
Stupak went on to write “that any further proceedings related to the reorganization of the Greektown Casino by the Michigan Gaming Control Board or other agencies be postponed” until a determination is made by federal authorities.
Stupak expressed his concerns regarding this matter following a meeting with Director D.J. Hoffman of the Sault Tribe Board of Directors last week.
“On June 4, 2010 myself, Director (Keith) Massaway and Chairman (Darwin “Joe”) McCoy met with Congressman Stupak to discuss Tribal issues, including Greektown,” said Hoffman. “I am extremely grateful that Congressman Stupak recognized the serious nature of this situation and immediately took action to call this issue into question.”
Chairman McCoy expressed similar sentiments.
Stupak Throws Indian Law Monkey Wrench Into Greektown Bankruptcy
Potentially, though perhaps not likely, this is a huge issue. Assuming that the Greektown parcel is owned by the Secretary of Interior on behalf of the Sault Tribe, then an Act of Congress may be required. And if one is not forthcoming, there may be some very interesting litigation involving the interaction of federal bankrupcty laws and maybe the Quiet Title Act. If the land is not in trust, then we may still have a Non-Intercourse Act problem, but likely not. Apparently, according to the letter, the land is in trust.
Update: Via Indianz, here is Stupak’s letter.
WASHINGTON — U.S. Rep Bart Stupak wants to halt the bankruptcy reorganization of Greektown Casino at least until the federal government determines whether an act of Congress is needed to transfer the land the Detroit gaming hall sits on.
Earlier this year, a federal bankruptcy judge approved a reorganization plan allowing Greektown Casino’s bondholders — including several private equity and hedge funds — to take ownership. The Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians, based on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, has a majority ownership stake in the casino.
The process needs the approval of the Michigan Gaming Control Board, with a court deadline of June 30 approaching.
But Stupak, D-Menominee, has asked U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to delay any change in ownership while they investigate whether land held by the federal government on behalf of the tribe — about three-fourths of an acre on Beaubien Street in Detroit — can be transferred without an act of Congress.
“The tribe stands to lose its entire investment in the business, including a portion of the real property underlying the casino,” Stupak said in the letter written Wednesday.
According to Stupak, 400 Monroe Associates — controlled by Greektown businessman Ted Gatzaros — deeded the land to the U.S. Department of Interior on behalf of the tribe in 1992.
Tribally owned lands cannot be sold without the consent of the federal government, and the Interior Department is not allowed to approve the sale of such land without direct congressional authorization, Stupak said.
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