Law

James Meggesto: Deadline in $940M contract support cost case

Tuesday, October 13, 2015

Oglala Sioux Tribe President John Yellow Bird Steele at the Ramah settlement announcement in Albuquerque, New Mexico, on September 17, 2015. Photo from Bureau of Indian Affairs / Twitter

Attorneys Philip Baker-Shenk and James Meggesto look closer at the $940 million settlement in the Ramah Navajo contract support costs case. Tribes have until November 19 to file objections:

After nearly 25 years of litigation, the proposed settlement, announced Sept. 16, requires DOI to pay $940 million to resolve more than 600 tribes and tribal entities' claims for shortfalls in CSC funding. The three lawyers for the class seek 8.5 percent of the $940 million – roughly $80 million – in attorneys' fees, plus an estimated $1.5 million in costs, subject to approval by the court.
The settlement assigns each Indian tribe or tribal organization in the class a "distribution percentage" to determine its share of the settlement amount after deduction of attorneys' fees and distribution expenses. Here are the estimated percentage and dollar shares to be distributed for each Indian tribe and tribal organization in the class. Generally, the distribution percentages were determined by a ratio between (a) the amount of CSC that allegedly should have been paid, and (b) the CSC actually paid to each class member during the settlement years, as determined by the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) payment database and, for fiscal year 2013, the BIA's 2013 Shortfall Report. Class counsel say the ratio is an estimate based on the amount of CSC funding received – those who received comparatively larger amounts of CSC from 1994 through 2012 are slated to receive larger amounts of the CSC shortfall settlement.
In order to determine the amount of CSC that should have allegedly been paid to each tribe in each contract year, class counsel used a random sample of class members for each year from 1994 through 2012. Accountants for each side sampled contract information, independently determined the amount of CSC that should have been paid to them, and calculated the class member's resulting CSC ratio for that year. The statisticians then averaged their independently calculated ratios for each sampled class member, and then averaged the CSC ratios of all sampled class members in that year to produce an overall CSC ratio for each year.

Get the Story:
Philip Baker-Shenk and James Meggesto: Indian Tribes Have Important November 19 CSC Filing Deadline - The DOI Settlement Funds are Available for Tribes with Self-Determination Contracts and Self-Governance Agreements (JDSupra 10/12)