Opinion ID: 163954
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Due Process/Retroactivity/Equal Protection

Text: 20 Plaintiffs' first argument is that the IBLA's decision violated their due process rights by retroactively barring them from relying upon valid Supreme Court decisions and DOI regulations following those decisions when they invoked the resumption doctrine to preserve their claims prior to the government's challenge to the validity of those claims. As indicated, the General Mining Law of 1872 required [o]n each claim located ... not less than $100 worth of labor ... or improvements ... each year.... 30 U.S.C. § 28. Under the savings clause of the 1920 Act, claims, like those of plaintiffs, located prior to the enactment of the Act could be subject to patent and therefore private ownership rather than only leasehold if thereafter maintained in compliance with the laws under which initiated. 30 U.S.C. § 193. 21 Initially, the Supreme Court suggested that, while a claimant is required to perform the $100 of annual assessment work, failure to do so does not ipso facto forfeit the claim, but only renders it subject to loss by relocation. Wilbur v. United States ex rel. Krushnic, 280 U.S. 306, 317, 50 S.Ct. 103, 74 L.Ed. 445 (1930). However, the Court stated that the law is clear that no relocation can be made if work be resumed after default and before such relocation. Id.; see also Cliffs Synfuel, 291 F.3d at 1258 (noting that even after the enactment of the Mineral Leasing Act, an owner of a pre 1920 oil shale claim was under no obligation to perform the requisite assessment work on an annual basis so long as they were able to avail themselves of the resumption doctrine before the claim was relocated by a subsequent claimant) (citing Krushnic, 280 U.S. at 317, 50 S.Ct. 103). The Court further suggested that the annual assessment work requirement `was not necessary to preserve the possessory right ... as against the United States, but only as against subsequent relocators. So far as the government was concerned, failure to do assessment work for any year was without effect.' Ickes v. Virginia-Colorado Dev. Corp., 295 U.S. 639, 645, 55 S.Ct. 888, 79 L.Ed. 1627 (1935) (quoting Krushnic, 280 U.S. at 317, 50 S.Ct. 103). Thus, as of 1935, it appeared that the United States had no interest in enforcing the assessment work requirement, and resumption of assessment work before a challenge could cure any default in the performance of such work. Plaintiffs argue that they relied upon those decisions, and DOI regulations following them, in failing to perform annual assessment work for decades. 22 As we observed in Cliffs Synfuel, [t]he Court radically altered these two concepts in re-examining the Leasing Act's effect on pre-1920 oil shale claims in Hickel v. Oil Shale Corp., 400 U.S. 48, 91 S.Ct. 196, 27 L.Ed.2d 193 (1970): 23 The Court first rejected its earlier formulations that had declared the government to be a disinterested party, unable to assert rights to a pre-1920 oil shale claim upon which assessment work had been discontinued. It stated that if we assume, arguendo, that failure to do assessment work as provided in the 1872 Act concerned at the time only the claimant and any subsequent relocator, the United States, speaking through the Secretary of the Interior, became a vitally interested party by reason of the 1920 Act. 24 Cliffs Synfuel, 291 F.3d at 1258-59 (quoting Hickel, 400 U.S. at 53, 91 S.Ct. 196). As the Hickel Court further explained: 25 If we were to hold to the contrary that enforcement of the assessment work of § 28 was solely at the private initiative of relocators, the maintenance provision of § 37 becomes largely illusory, because relocation of oil shale claims became impossible after the 1920 Act. So if enforcement of the assessment work requirement of § 28 were dependent solely on the activities and energies of oil shale relocators, there was no effective enforcement device. 26 Hickel, 400 U.S. at 56, 91 S.Ct. 196. 27 In reviewing its prior decisions in Krushnic and Virginia-Colorado, the Court in Hickel largely confined them to their facts, agreeing with their specific holdings that every default in assessment work does not cause the claim to be lost. 4 Id. at 57, 91 S.Ct. 196. Stating that [d]efaults... might be the equivalent of abandonment[,] however, the Court specifically held that token assessment work, or assessment work that does not substantially satisfy the requirements of 30 U.S.C. § 28, is not adequate to `maintain' the claims within the meaning of § 37 of the Leasing Act. Id. Characterizing the broad language of Krushnic and Virginia-Colorado as dicta, the Court concluded that they must be confined to situations where there had been substantial compliance with the assessment work requirements of the 1872 Act, so that the `possessory title' of the claimant, granted by 30 U.S.C. § 26, will not be disturbed on flimsy or insubstantial grounds. Id. Further, the Court made it clear that upon default in the performance of assessment work, the United States was the beneficiary: While the objective of the 1872 Act was to open the lands `to a beneficial use by some other party,' once the original claimant defaulted, the defeasance inevitably accrued to the United States, owner of the fee. Id. at 55, 91 S.Ct. 196. Indeed, § 37 of the 1920 Act makes the United States the beneficiary of all claims invalid for lack of assessment work or otherwise. Id. at 57 91 S.Ct. 196. 5 28 In Cliffs Synfuel, we discussed and applied Hickel to a case very similar to this case. Claimants in Cliffs Synfuel had performed assessment work from 1918 until 1930 and had resumed such assessment work from 1977 until 1992, prior to any challenge by the United States, but no assessment work was performed during the 46-year period stretching from July 1, 1931 to September 1, 1977. Cliffs Synfuel, 291 F.3d at 1260. We explained our view of Hickel as follows: 29 From the Court's statement that every default in assessment work does not cause the claim to be lost, it logically follows that in each case we must consider the quantum of the actual assessment work performed and the length of time the claimant failed to meet the annual assessment work required by the Mining Act of 1872. 30 Id. at 1259 (quoting Hickel, 400 U.S. at 57, 91 S.Ct. 196). We compared the facts of Hickel, where the Court found the claimants had not substantially complied with the assessment work requirement, with those of Krushnic and Virginia-Colorado, where the Court found the claimants had substantially complied with the assessment work requirement. Noting that in Hickel, [a]nnual assessment work had basically ceased prior to the 1930's as well as in the twenty years thereafter, id., as compared with the brief, one-year defaults in Krushnic and Virginia-Colorado, we concluded that the facts in Cliffs Synfuel are decidedly more similar to the situation which confronted the Court in Hickel, rather than in Krushnic or Virginia-Colorado.  Id. at 1260. We concluded that [u]nder these circumstances our decision is driven by the facts and reasoning set forth in Hickel.  Id. 31 Significantly, while we did not hold that the resumption doctrine is completely inapplicable to oil shale claims, we explained its limits. 6 The claimant in Cliffs Synfuel had argued that its resumption of assessment work in 1977, after a 46-year period of inactivity, but prior to any challenge to the validity of its claim by the United States, had revived its claim. We held it did not: 32 On the basis of Hickel's teachings, we conclude that the 46 years of inaction on Appellee's claims reflects token assessment work, or assessment work that does not substantially satisfy the requirements of 30 U.S.C. § 28.... Therefore, in this case, the 1920 Act makes the United States the beneficiary of all claims invalid for lack of assessment work or otherwise. 33 Id. at 1261 (quoting Hickel, 400 U.S. at 57, 91 S.Ct. 196). We went on to state: 34 In so concluding, we perforce reject Appellee's suggestion that its assessment work, which took place from 1977 through 1992, offsets the previous 46 years of dereliction and restores a legitimate right to the claims by constituting more than token assessment work. The short answer to this is that by appropriate analogy, this argument was rejected by the Court in Hickel when it noted that a decades-long lapse on assessment work might be the equivalent of abandonment.... Applying the rationale of the Court, we hold that prior to 1977 Appellee's default in doing the assessment work ... ma[de] the United States the beneficiary of all claims invalid for lack of assessment work long before it resumed assessment work in 1977. Appellee's activity that began in 1977 was too little, too late. 35 Id. (quoting Hickel, 400 U.S. at 57, 91 S.Ct. 196). 36 We hold that the rationale and facts of Hickel and Cliffs Synfuel compel the same result in this case. Assuming substantial evidence supports the ALJ's finding that plaintiffs failed to perform the required assessment work for several decades (in Exxon's case, many decades), that `default in doing the assessment work ... ma[de] the United States the beneficiary of all claims invalid for lack of assessment work' despite any claimed resumption in the 1970s prior to the government's challenge to the validity of plaintiffs' claims. Id. 37 Plaintiffs attempt to avoid the sweep of Hickel and Cliffs Synfuel by arguing that those cases did not address the due process retroactivity argument plaintiffs press upon us here. We disagree. It is implicit in both the Supreme Court's decision in Hickel and our court's decision in Cliffs Synfuel that neither court was troubled by the fact that DOI regulations suggested that resumption of assessment work prior to a challenge preserved a claim and that, until 1972, the United States had no interest in whether assessment work was performed. To the extent plaintiffs argue they were entitled to rely upon Krushnic and Virginia-Colorado, the Supreme Court in Hickel in 1970 confined those cases to their particular facts (upholding the validity of claims where assessment work was resumed after a one-year lapse in the performance of such work) and made it clear that the United States was interested in the enforcement of the assessment work requirements, and indeed was the beneficiary of an abandoned claim, as a matter of statutory interpretation. In short, our decision in Cliffs Synfuel, interpreting and applying Hickel, dictates the conclusion we reach here — that plaintiffs' claims are invalid for failure to substantially comply with the annual assessment requirement, and that they became invalid long before plaintiffs resumed, or attempted to resume, assessment work, provided we find substantial evidence supports the ALJ's findings on the quantum of assessment work performed. 7 We turn therefore to that issue. 38