In Tanner-Brown v. Haaland, No. 22-5302 (D.C. Cir. June 25, 2024), the D.C. Circuit reverses dismissal on Article III standing grounds of an action against the U.S. Department of Interior for an accounting, based on an argument only first raised by plaintiff after dismissal in a Fed. R. Civ. P. 59(e) motion to reconsider.
“Appellant Leatrice Tanner-Brown is a descendant of people enslaved by the Cherokee Tribe and emancipated at the end of the Civil War. Her grandfather, George Curls, received land allotments as a minor. Tanner-Brown and the Harvest Institute Freedman Federation, LLC (HIFF) brought suit seeking various remedies related to the allotments, including an accounting from the Secretary of the Interior arising from the alleged creation of a trust relationship between the federal government and Indian beneficiaries.”
The district court originally dismissed the action on the Article III standing ground “that the complaint failed to allege a concrete and particularized injury traceable to the defendants because it did not allege that Curls’ leases were being mismanaged or provide any basis for believing that ‘had Defendants fulfilled their purported statutory duty, Mr. Curls would have received royalties or at least royalties in a greater amount than any that he did receive.’”
After dismissal, plaintiffs moved to alter or amend the judgment pursuant to Rule 59(e), “arguing based on common-law principles of trust law that they ‘cannot assert an injury sufficient to establish standing because a trust beneficiary must first receive an accounting before determining whether a trust has been mismanaged’ and that ‘trust beneficiaries are entitled to an accounting regardless of whether an injury has been shown.’” While recognizing that plaintiff was raising a new standing argument in her Rule 59(e) motion, the district court addressed it and denied the argument on the merits.
The D.C. Circuit reverses the standing argument as to Tanner-Brown.
“At the outset, the government maintains that this version of Tanner-Brown’s injury-in-fact argument is forfeited because she raised it in her Rule 59(e) motion after the district court’s dismissal. But the forfeiture doctrine operates in our judicial system to avoid (1) surprise to litigants should an issue be decided on appeal ‘upon which they have had no opportunity to introduce evidence’ and (2) the ‘[e]normous confusion and interminable delay [that] would result if counsel were permitted to appeal upon points not presented to the court below.’”
Here, because the district court actually considered the standing argument on the Rule 59 motion, it is held not to be forfeited. “The government has had a full opportunity to respond to the plaintiffs’ argument, both in the Rule 59(e) proceedings and now on appeal. We agree that it conserves judicial resources for us to rule on plaintiffs’ standing theory ‘for purposes of facilitating the resolution of this case,’ as the district court concluded.”
And because the plaintiff plausibly alleged a trust relationship, there was injury-in-fact at the pleadings stage. “The standing question before us, then, requires that we assume that Tanner-Brown is correct on her legal theory that the statute could give rise to a trust relationship with attendant fiduciary duties under certain circumstances, including if a guardian or representative were appointed by the Secretary or the history of the government’s control created a trust. On her theory of the case and the facts alleged in the complaint, she has asserted a cognizable injury-in-fact[.]”
Paul Mollica's Federal Courts Blog 