Opinion ID: 1466405
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Tribe's Claim Against NGV

Text: We begin with the Tribe's effort to obtain a declaratory judgment, seeking a proclamation that its agreement with NGV was invalid because it had not been approved by the Secretary pursuant to Section 81 or, in the alternative, because it violated Section 2710. We have no occasion to decide the merits of those questionsat least not at this stage of this opinion [5]  because we conclude that the Tribe's efforts do not belong in the federal courts at all. It is undisputed that the Tribe's claimed adversary NGV has released it from any liability whatever, looking instead solely to a claim against Harrah's. And the Tribe has itself recognized that its management contract with Harrah's (which would have imposed on it an indemnification obligation covering NGV's claims against Harrah's) was void under Section 2705(a)(4) due to the Tribe's failure to have obtained approval of that contract by the Chairman of the Gaming Commission. [6] That being so, the Tribe cannot bootstrap itself into an Article III case or controversy vis-a-vis NGV by undertaking a new indemnification obligation as part of an agreement to terminate its already void contract with Harrah'san indemnification promise that is wholly lacking in consideration and is hence itself invalid. [7] In short, the Tribewhich does not itself face any potential liability to NGV must try to fall back on its claimed sense of uncertainty about any future essays into the gambling industry. But those uncertainties exist only in outer space  they surely cannot be trotted out against NGV, with which the Tribe no longer has any contractual relationship or any on going exposure to liability. Instead such uncertainties raise wholly speculative concerns that call for a type of purely advisory opinion that federal courts are prohibited by the Constitution from giving to putative litigants (see, e.g., City of Los Angeles v. Lyons, 461 U.S. 95, 106-07, 110-11, 103 S.Ct. 1660, 75 L.Ed.2d 675 (1983), holding that because Lyons could not show that he faced a real and immediate threat of again being illegally choked, his claim was speculative in nature and therefore could not meet Article III's case or controversy requirement). As already stated, that alone should operate to knock the Tribe out of the box in terms of standing to pursue its own litigation. This case scenario poses a dramatic contrast to litigation such as a patent case seeking a declaratory judgment (see, e.g., Société de Conditionnement en Aluminium v. Hunter Eng'g Co., 655 F.2d 938, 942-44 (9th Cir.1981)), where there are two parties involved in the dispute with actual interests of sufficient immediacy and reality ( Maryland Cas. Co. v. Pac. Coal & Oil Co., 312 U.S. 270, 273, 61 S.Ct. 510, 85 L.Ed. 826 (1941)), even though no infringement action has been brought. If, as and when the Tribe chooses to engage in a future proposed entry into gambling activity with some other party and may then seek a declaration of its rights under a contract with that party, there may perhaps be federal subject matter jurisdiction to address that subject (a question that need not be answered here because it is purely hypothetical). But here, with the contractual relationship that once bound NGV and the Tribe already having been terminated, there is no one on the other side of the v. sign from the Tribeand that is fatal in jurisdictional terms. We thus vacate the district court's decision to grant the Tribe the declaratory relief it sought.