Opinion ID: 152512
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Cayuga's Import

Text: The district court determined here that the plaintiffs assert a current possessory interest in the land and that their claims, to the extent premised on such an interest, are subject to the equitable considerations at issue in Cayuga. Oneida III, 500 F.Supp.2d at 133. Plaintiffs, the district court observed, assert certain claims predicated on their continuing right to possess land . . . and seek relief returning that land and damages based on their dispossession. Id. at 134. The court concluded that [t]he Second Circuit has held that a laches defense does apply to `indisputably disruptive' possessory land claims, like those brought by the Cayugas and Plaintiffs in the instant case, and that it was required to find Plaintiffs' possessory land claims are subject to the defense of laches. Id. We agree. With regard to the claims that the Oneidas alone assert against Madison and Oneida Counties, each one of these claims is a possessory claim of the sort found potentially subject to equitable bar in Cayuga. The Oneidas assert that the Counties have unlawfully possessed the subject lands, excluding the Oneidas from their rightful possession; that they have kept and continued to keep [the Oneidas] out of possession; and that they have severed attachments such as minerals, crops, timber and other valuable resources from the land without authority to do so. Oneida Am. Compl. ¶¶ 55-56, 59. The Oneidas seek, inter alia, damages in the amount of the fair market value of the subject lands, and damages representing the fair market rental value of the subject lands and the value of all minerals and other resources taken from the subject lands. Each of these claims, whether asserting violations of federal common law, the Nonintercourse Act, or the Treaty of Canandaigua, sounds either in ejectment, trespass, or a related theory of injury derived from the Oneidas' claimed right to possession of the lands. [6] Indeed, the Counties were not parties to the various sale agreements between New York and the Oneidas, and thus the only claims available to be asserted against them relate to their alleged unlawful occupation of the subject lands in derogation of the Oneidas' superior possessory interest. Such claims, premised on the Oneidas' continuing right of possession, fall within Cayuga 's holding that equitable defenses apply to possessory land claims of this type. Cayuga, 413 F.3d at 276. This much is clear from even the most cursory reading of Cayuga. Cayuga expressly concluded that possessory land claimsany claims premised on the assertion of a current, continuing right to possession as a result of a flaw in the original termination of Indian titleare by their nature disruptive and that, accordingly, the equitable defenses recognized in Sherrill apply to such claims. See id. at 274-75 (determining claim seeking award of current market value of subject lands to be merely a monetized form of a claim assert[ing] a continuing right to immediate possession (internal quotation marks omitted)); id. at 278 (indicating that claim seeking award of past rental value based on a trespass theory is subject to equitable defense because there can be no trespass unless the [plaintiffs] possessed the land in question and such a claim is based on a violation of their constructive possession). As the district court in this case determined, Cayuga concluded that this type of claim is inherently disruptive because it seeks to overturn years of settled land ownership. Oneida II, 500 F.Supp.2d at 133. Here, the claims against Madison and Oneida Counties and the relief sought from these defendants are effectively identical to the claims and relief sought in Cayuga, in which the plaintiffs sought both the current fair market value of the subject lands as an alternative remedy to injunctive relief sounding in ejectment, and rental damages from 1795 to 1999 sounding in trespass. See Cayuga, 413 F.3d at 276, 278. Accordingly, the claims against Madison and Oneida Counties are subject to the defense recognized by this Court in Cayuga. The same perforce holds true for the identical claims sounding in ejectment, trespass, or related possessory theories of injury brought against New York State by both the Oneidas and the United States. The district court rightly noted that this Court was very clear in Cayuga: Indian possessory land claims that seek or sound in ejectment of the current owners are indisputably disruptive and would, by their very nature, project redress into the present and future; such claims are subject to the doctrine of laches. Oneida III, 500 F.Supp.2d at 136. In Cayuga, the Court concluded with regard to such claims that the import of Sherrill is that `disruptive,' forward-looking claims, a category exemplified by possessory land claims, are subject to equitable defenses, including laches. Cayuga, 413 F.3d at 277. This is true even when such claims are legally viable and within the statute of limitations, id. at 273, when the relief sought is limited to monetary damages, and when the disruptive claims sound at law rather than in equity, id. at 273-75. Indeed, the United States acknowledges in its brief before this Court that Cayuga held that requests for money damages grounded on the asserted right to possess the land at issue, including the plaintiffs' Nonintercourse Act claim, to the extent predicated on such a right, are subject to the laches defense. U.S. Br. at 31. The United States contends that [this] holding was in error for several reasons, id., but as noted earlier this question is not properly before us, and we do not address it.