Title: Aircraft Equipment Co. v. Kiowa Tribe of Oklahoma
Citation: 1997 OK 59, 68OBJ1649, 939 P.2d 1143
Docket Number: 
State: Oklahoma
Issuer: Oklahoma Supreme Court
Date: May 6, 1997

Aircraft Equipment Co. v. Kiowa Tribe of Oklahoma Annotate this Case Aircraft Equipment Co. v. Kiowa Tribe of Oklahoma 1997 OK 59 939 P.2d 1143 68 OBJ 1649 Case Number: 86184 Decided: 05/06/1997 Supreme Court of Oklahoma AIRCRAFT EQUIPMENT COMPANY, Appellee/Cross Appellant, v. THE KIOWA TRIBE OF OKLAHOMA, Appellant/Cross Appellee, WATSON MANAGEMENT GROUP, INC.; KOCH OIL COMPANY, a division of KOCH INDUSTRIES, INC.; AQUILA ENERGY CORPORATION, KERR MCGEE REFINING CORPORATION, ORYX ENERGY CORPORATION, PLAINS LIQUIDS TRANSPORT, INC., SUN COMPANY, INC. (R&M), ASSOCIATED NATURAL GAS, INC., ASSOCIATED TRANSPORT AND TRADING COMPANY, SENEX PIPE LINE COMPANY, and HAMON OPERATING COMPANY, Appellees. APPEAL FROM THE DISTRICT COURT, OKLAHOMA COUNTY, THE HONORABLE JOHN M. AMICK, DISTRICT JUDGE ¶0 The District Court in Oklahoma County entered a money judgment in favor of Aircraft Equipment Company, the appellee, and against The Kiowa Tribe of Oklahoma, appellant. The Tribe appealed. The money judgment was affirmed. During the course of the appeal, Aircraft proceeded to enforce its money judgment out of tax funds in the possession of oil and gas operators and purchasers. The District Court in Oklahoma County entered judgment on Aircraft's petition for a creditor's bill, directed the funds be paid into the court, allowed costs and attorney fees out of the funds, and restrained the Tribe from enforcing tax liens against the oil and gas operators and purchasers. JUDGMENT OF THE DISTRICT COURT AFFIRMED. William J. Robinson Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, For Appellee and Cross Cross-Appellant, Aircraft Equipment Company Shelia D. Tims For Appellant, The Kiowa Tribe of Oklahoma R. Brown Wallace Oklahoma City, Oklahoma Janis Preslar Oklahoma City, Oklahoma For Appellees, Aquila Energy Corporation, The Home-Stake Royalty Corp., Sun Co., Inc. (R&M), and Associated Natural Gas, Inc., Associated Transport & Trading Co. Jonathan E. Miller Oklahoma City, Oklahoma For Appellee, Oryx Energy Corp. Myron K. Cunningham Oklahoma City, Oklahoma For Appellee, Kerr-McGee Corp. Dwight W. Birdwell For Appellee, Plains Liquids Ronald J. Pool Oklahoma City, Oklahoma Transport Inc. ALMA WILSON, Justice: [939 P.2d 1145] ¶1 This appeal arises out of a post-judgment proceeding in the District Court of Oklahoma County, Oklahoma, initiated by Aircraft Equipment Company, appellee (Aircraft), to satisfy a money judgment entered by the Oklahoma County District Court against The Kiowa Tribe of Oklahoma, appellant (Tribe). The dispositive question is whether the state district court may enforce its money judgment against the Tribe. Pursuant to the universal rule that the power to render a judgment includes the power to enforce the judgment, we answer in the affirmative. ¶2 The underlying money judgment in favor of Aircraft and against the Tribe was entered in a contract action and affirmed in Aircraft Equipment Company v. The Kiowa Tribe of Oklahoma, 921 P.2d 359 (Okla. 1996) (Aircraft I). Aircraft initiated a separate post-judgment proceeding seeking equitable relief in the nature of a creditor's bill during the pendency of the appeal in Aircraft I. ¶3 Through the creditor's bill, Aircraft sought to satisfy its judgment from funds in the possession of the Tribe's contracted tax collector, Watson Management Group, Inc., and the taxpayers, appellee oil and gas entities. ¶4 The Tribe asks this Court to reverse and vacate the money judgment in Aircraft I and to direct district court dismissal of the petition for a creditor's bill. The Tribe contends that in the absence of its consent to suit or its waiver of sovereign immunity, Oklahoma lacks judicial power to enter or enforce a money judgment against the Tribe. The Tribe argues that Aircraft I is based upon two Oklahoma cases that are inconsistent with federal law, Lewis v. The Sac and Fox Tribe of Oklahoma Housing Authority, 896 P.2d 503 (Okla. 1994), cert. denied 116 S. Ct. 476 (1995), and Hoover v. Kiowa Tribe of Oklahoma, [939 P.2d 1146] 909 P.2d 59 (Okla. 1995), cert. denied 116 S. Ct. 1675 (1996). The Tribe asserts that Lewis and Hoover failed to recognize that tribal sovereignty is presumed intact, Iowa Mutual Insurance Company v. LaPlante, 480 U.S. 9 , 107 S. Ct. 971, 94 L. Ed. 2d 10 (1987), and that absolute immunity to damage suits is a significant aspect of tribal sovereignty, Oklahoma Tax Commission v. Citizen Band Potawatomi Indian Tribe, 498 U.S. 505 , 111 S. Ct. 905, 112 L. Ed. 2d 1112 (1991). ¶5 In Iowa Mutual Insurance Company v. LaPlante, supra, an insurer sought declaratory judgment that its liability contract, insuring an on-reservation commercial enterprise, did not impose a duty to defend in the tribal court against a claim to recover for personal injury occurring on the reservation. The LaPlante Court concluded that the tribal court should determine its jurisdiction and any tribal court remedy should be exhausted, as a matter of comity rather than jurisdiction, before the federal district court considers the declaratory judgment claim. LaPlante does not stand for the proposition that a presumption of sovereignty bars the exercise of state judicial power over a controversy arising out of an Indian tribe's commercial activity outside of Indian country as presented in Aircraft I. ¶6 In Oklahoma Tax Commission v. Citizen Band Potawatomi Indian Tribe, supra, the state assessed the Potawatomi Tribe for taxes which the Tribe had failed to pay on cigarettes sold to tribal members and non-members at the Tribe's convenience store on Indian country land. The Court concluded that the doctrine of tribal sovereign immunity protects the Potawatomi Tribe from suit by the state to collect its assessment for delinquent taxes. Following Washington v. Confederated Tribes of Colville Reservation, 447 U.S. 134 , 100 S. Ct. 2069, 65 L. Ed. 2d 10 (1980) and Moe v. Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, 425 U.S. 463 , 96 S. Ct. 1634, 48 L. Ed. 2d 96 (1976), the Court recognized that the state's taxing power may reach inside of Indian country and that the immunity doctrine does not shield an Indian tribe from all state-law obligations to assist in the collection of state taxes. Concluding that the immunity doctrine prevented the state from collecting its delinquent taxes directly from the tribe, the Citizens Band Potawatomie opinion observes that the doctrine does not prevent collection of taxes from individual tribal agents and officers, nor individual Indians dealing with non-Indians within Indian country, or non-Indians dealing with the Tribe outside Indian country. ¶7 The dissent would declare, as urged by the Tribe, that Oklahoma's judicial power can only be extended over her Indian tribes upon express tribal or congressional consent. In State ex rel. May v. Seneca-Cayuga Tribe, 711 P.2d 77 , 85 (1985), we rejected the concept that Oklahoma's judicial authority does not reach Indian tribes within the state's borders, unless Congress or the Tribe has expressly provided otherwise. Our Seneca-Cayuga holding was grounded in the early congressional enactments surrounding statehood. ¶8 We adhere to the long-standing, well-established rule that if a court has the power to render a judgment, it has the power to enforce its judgment and give it effect through the proper processes. United States ex rel. Riggs v. Johnson County, 6 Wall. 166, 18 L. Ed. 768 (1868). We determined in Aircraft I that the district court sitting in Oklahoma County had the power to render a money judgment against the Tribe for its failure to perform a contract executed outside of Indian country and we affirmed the summary judgment entered in favor of Aircraft and against the Tribe. Aircraft, as a judgment creditor, sought to enforce its judgment against the Tribe, as the judgment debtor, through an authorized equitable remedy. ¶9 The Tribe asserted before the district court and asserts in this appeal that exercise of state judicial power to seize tribal tax revenues impermissibly infringes upon the Tribe's federally protected sovereign rights. Citing Merrion v. Jacarilla Apache Tribe, 455 U.S. 130 , 102 S. Ct. 894, 71 L. Ed. 2d 21 (1982), the Tribe contends that the power to tax is an essential attribute of Indian sovereign rights. Without citation of authority, the Tribe argues that the power to tax is meaningless if the state has the power to seize the fruits of the taxing power or restrain tax enforcement. Our independent research reveals no authority holding that satisfaction of a valid, enforceable money judgment against a taxing entity out of its tax revenues renders the power to tax meaningless or otherwise diminishes or surrenders the power to tax. ¶10 The Tribe also argues that enforcement of the money judgment infringes upon tribal self-government contrary to Lewis v. Sac and Fox Tribe of Oklahoma Housing Authority, supra. Enforcement of a money judgment against an Indian tribe in a court of competent jurisdiction is obviously a burden upon the Tribe. However, Lewis does not suggest that the district court must make inquiry as to whether a state-court, post-judgment enforcement proceeding burdens the Tribe. Lewis requires a preliminary inquiry to test the outer limits of state-court cognizance to render judgment on the Indian interests in the initial controversy, the contract controversy in Aircraft I. We view the burden of enforcement of the money judgment in favor of Aircraft and against the Tribe as legally permissible where the Tribe ventured outside its Indian country, engaged in commercial activity for economic gain, and created a contract controversy which was ultimately settled in a court of competent jurisdiction by the money judgment sought to be enforced. ¶11 That the Tribe had the opportunity to challenge Aircraft's right to pursue a creditor's bill is not an issue. In response to Aircraft's summary judgment motion, the Tribe elected to reiterate its challenge to the [939 P.2d 1149] power of the court to render the money judgment in the first instance and to enforce the judgment. The Tribe did not, however, challenge the availability or propriety of the equitable remedy. Below and on appeal, the parties represent that there is no dispute as to any fact material to this post-judgment controversy. Under these circumstances, summary judgment granting the petition for a creditor's bill was proper. ¶12 Aircraft, in its cross-appeal, challenges the interpleader. Aircraft contends the district court abused its power in ordering payment of the Tribe's funds in the possession of the oil and gas entities into the court. An order for holding funds in the court is within the discretion of that court JUDGMENT OF THE DISTRICT COURT AFFIRMED. HODGES, LAVENDER, HARGRAVE, OPALA and WILSON, JJ, concur. SIMMS and WATT, JJ., concur in result. KAUGER, C.J., and SUMMERS, V.C.J., dissent. FOOT