In what is being billed as the largest class action suit ever, the American Indian Trusts are suing the federal government for what they regard as mismanagement of fund owed to the trusts over the last 100 years. Last week legal experts and tribal reps from around the country met at Arizona State University to discuss the case and it's legal and financial implications.

According to the Department of Interior, the actual amount of money unpaid due to mismanagement is speculated to be somewhere around $13 billion. The plaintiffs are demanding that sum plus compound interest, bringing the total figure sought to $176 million:

Via Arizona State University's Webdevil.com:

"The problem has been neglected literally since the 19th century," said Kevin Gover, law professor at ASU. "That's when the mismanagement of Indian assets really began, and over time, everybody in line sort of passed it along to the next guy"...

...James Cason, associate deputy secretary for the Department of the Interior, said the department estimates about $13 billion over the last 100 years, but plaintiffs asserted $176 billion was owed. "If you make the assumption that we took in $13 billion over time, and we never paid out a dime, and you add compound interest to it then it's $176 billion," Cason said.

Cason called the assertion ridiculous, because no one would have let it go on that long. "It assumes a premise that our Indian beneficiaries were never clever enough to figure out they weren't getting money for over 100 years, and that we had 100 years worth of congresses that never caught on," Cason said. "That just doesn't happen"...

...Gover said they plan on having several more conferences because of the complexity of the issue and doesn't know when this will be resolved. "I don't know that it gets resolved," Gover said. "There's a push under way in Congress right now to really change the law around this issue. We knew that, and that's why we have people here that are going to discuss that legislation."

The United States generally deals poorly with his historical dirty laundery. It will be interesting to see what traction this case gets in the courts and in the court of public opinion.

The full Web-Devil article appears here.

-- MDT