Saturday, February 27, 2021
In
Olson v. United States, 2021 WL 137911 (Fed. Cl. 2021), lessees of trust land on the Yakama Reservation, sued the United States in the Court of Federal Claims under the
Tucker Act, contending that the Wapato Irrigation Project (WIP), which provided irrigation water to customers within the reservation, had violated its implicit agreement to provide water for their crops. The Court dismissed on the grounds that the United States, though acting as trustee for the trust beneficiaries, was not a party to the leases: “Each of these documents states that the lease or permit is a contract entered into ‘by and between the Indian or Indians named below (the Secretary of the Interior acting for and on behalf of the Indians) hereinafter called the ‘landlord,’ and an individual tenant. … Long-standing precedent from the Supreme Court, along with more recent binding precedent from the Federal Circuit, makes clear that the exercise of such