Opinion ID: 779526
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: State Defendants' Appeal

Text: 25 The state defendants maintain that the plaintiffs in this case failed to raise the who issue in their complaint, and therefore are not entitled to attorneys' fees incurred as a result of work done on that issue in the Katie John/Babbitt consolidated case. Title 16 U.S.C. § 3117(a) provides for attorneys' fees and costs as follows: 26 Local residents and other persons and organizations who are prevailing parties in an action filed pursuant to this section shall be awarded their costs and attorney's fees. 27 In order to award attorneys' fees, the district court therefore had to conclude that the Quinhagak plaintiffs were prevailing parties. 28 The district court determined that fees were appropriate on the who issue decided in Katie John /Babbitt because the court invited the participation of the parties to the related cases and because resolution of the issue was necessary to each case. Alaska disagrees; the state argues that, although plaintiffs had an interest in which authority — federal or state — would manage subsistence fishing in navigable waters, they based their arguments on this issue entirely on the determination of whether or not navigable waters were public lands as defined under ANILCA. As the defendants characterize plaintiffs' argument, if the waters were public lands, then they were subject, a fortiori, to federal rather than state management. By contrast, Alaska tries to distinguish its own basis for asserting state as opposed to federal jurisdiction in Babbitt, and argues that ANILCA did not grant the federal government jurisdiction to create the FSB and to establish a comprehensive plan, even on public lands. Alaska's position in Babbitt was that Congress — though it conditioned state subsistence management on public lands on the state's having laws consistent with Title VIII — failed to provide the Interior Secretary with express authority to manage public lands should the State of Alaska fail to comply with Title VIII. 5 Because the Quinhagak plaintiffs did not argue this particular reasoning in their complaint and preliminary injunction motion, Alaska maintains that they did not properly join the debate over whether federal or state control should apply. 29 We conclude that Alaska's interpretation of the events underlying the current conflict begs the question. In its March 12, 1993, opposition to the Quinhagak plaintiffs' motion for preliminary injunction, the state defendants acknowledged that their claims about federal jurisdiction were at issue in Quinhagak, stating: 30 The State Defendants submit that the Federal Defendants lack the authority under ANILCA to manage subsistence fishing on the Goodnews, Kanektok, and Arolik Rivers. The State Defendants will be filing an extensive brief on this issue on or before March 19, 1993 in State v. Babbitt. ... The State Defendants will not attempt to address this issue at this preliminary stage [in Quinhagak ] in the interest of avoiding duplicative briefing. 31 The state defendants thus recognized that the Babbitt question of whether or not the federal government had jurisdiction was important to resolution of the Quinhagak plaintiffs' claims, and signaled its intent to raise that issue in its defense in response to plaintiffs' contention that the waters were subject to federal management. 32 Moreover, the district court understood that the who question — however broadly or narrowly construed — was central to resolution of the Quinhagak plaintiffs' case. If the federal government did not have jurisdiction, as the state defendants claimed, then only the state could manage the fisheries; as the Alaska Supreme Court decided, plaintiffs would be ineligible for any sort of subsistence priority implemented under state auspices. McDowell, 785 P.2d at 6. Therefore, if plaintiffs were going to succeed in their aim of retaining their subsistence interest, their case hinged on more than whether or not the waters in question were on public lands; even if the waters were on public lands for ANILCA purposes, if the federal government had no jurisdiction to implement the Title VIII subsistence priority, the public v. private distinction would be meaningless. 33 In its order granting costs and fees, the district court also noted that the who issue as articulated in Babbitt was narrower than the issue as it played out in the consolidated Katie John /Babbitt litigation. The court ultimately construed the issue broadly, requiring it to resolve whether the state or federal government had jurisdiction — based on all the relevant arguments — to manage subsistence fishing and to implement Title VIII. We conclude that the district court made no error in its understanding of the issues before it, and further did not err in deciding that the Quinhagak plaintiffs properly raised and pursued the who issue — as the court invited them to — in the consolidated Katie John /Babbitt case. 34 Because the district court made no error when it determined that the who issue involved a broader question about federal as opposed to state jurisdiction and because the Quinhagak plaintiffs properly — and necessarily — addressed that issue as required for resolution of their own case, we hold that the district court was correct to hold that the Quinhagak plaintiffs were prevailing parties on both the where and who issues. The district court did not abuse its discretion in granting fees and costs for both issues pursuant to ANILCA.