Burlington Northern Railroad v. Red Wolf

Opinion by Judge WRIGHT; Dissent by Judge KLEINFELD.

We must decide whether a district court may enjoin Indian tribal court proceedings before tribal remedies have been exhausted. We conclude that it may not because no exception to the exhaustion rule applies.

BACKGROUND:

A jury in Crow Tribal Court awarded $250 million to the heirs of two tribal members killed when a Burlington Northern Railroad train hit their car at a railroad crossing on the reservation. Under the Crow Tribal Code, execution on the judgment was automatically stayed for ten business days. The Railroad moved to stay the judgment and to waive the Code’s supersedeas bond requirement pending its appeal to the Crow Court of Appeals. The trial court denied the motion and ordered the Railroad to post bond in the amount of the judgment plus interest as required by Rule 18 of the Crow Tribal Court. 1 The Railroad appealed that bond ruling. Before the tribal appellate court ruled on that question, the Railroad sought and received a temporary restraining order in federal court enjoining enforcement of the tribal court judgment.

The' tribal trial court held a previously scheduled hearing regarding posting of a…

dissenting:

I respectfully dissent.

This case resembles - Pennzoil, in that the defendant sought federal court protection against a huge defeat in a tribunal other than a federal district court. See Pennzoil Co. v. Texaco, Inc., 481 U.S. 1 , 107 S.Ct. 1519 , 95 L.Ed.2d 1 (1987). But there is one very big difference. The courts of Texas are bound by the Constitution of the United States. The courts of the Crow tribe are not. “As separate sovereigns pre-existing the Constitution, tribes have historically been regarded as unconstrained by those constitutional provisions framed specifically as limitations of federal or state authority.” Santa Clara Pueblo v. Martinez, 436 U.S. 49, 56 , 98 S.Ct. 1670, 1675-76 , 56 L.Ed.2d 106 (1978).

Had Burlington Northern lost its ease in a court of a foreign country which did not accord due process, the judgment would not be enforceable in the United States. Bank Melli Iran v. Pahlavi, 58 F.3d 1406, 1410 (9th Cir.1995); Hilton v. Guyot, 159 U.S. 113, 205-06 , 16 S.Ct. 139, 159-60 , 40 L.Ed. 95 (1895). But Indian country is not foreign in this sense, so a judgment debtor in a tribal court cannot raise Bank Melli Iran as a bar to execution. It is…