478
Opinion of the Court
Navajo Nation, Kayenta District, against defendants including the Vanadium Corporation of America (VCA), predecessor by merger of petitioner Cyprus Foote Mineral Company. Richards raised Navajo tort law claims for wrongful death and loss of consortium arising from uranium mining and processing on the Navajo Nation Reservation by VCA and other defendants from the 1940's through the 1960's. 136 F. 3d 610, 613 (CA9 1998); App. 39a-60a.
El Paso and Cyprus Foote each filed suit in the United States District Court for the District of Arizona, seeking to enjoin the Neztsosies and Richards from pursuing their claims in the Tribal Courts. The District Court, citing the tribal-court exhaustion doctrine of National Farmers Union Ins. Cos. v. Crow Tribe, 471 U. S. 845 (1985), denied preliminary injunctions "except to the extent" that the Neztsosies and Richards sought relief in the Tribal Courts under the Price-Anderson Act. App. 71a, 73a. The practical consequences of those injunctions were left in the air, however, since the District Court declined to decide whether the Act applied to the claims brought by the Neztsosies and Richards, leaving those determinations to the Tribal Courts in the first instance. Id., at 71a, 73a. Both El Paso and Cyprus Foote appealed.
On the companies' consolidated appeals, the Ninth Circuit affirmed the District Court's decisions declining to enjoin the Neztsosies and Richards from pursuing non-Price-Anderson Act claims, as well as the decisions to allow the Tribal Courts to decide in the first instance whether the Neztsosies' and Richards's tribal claims fell within the ambit of the Price-Anderson Act. 136 F. 3d, at 617, n. 4, 620. But the Court of Appeals did not rest there. Although neither the Neztsosies nor Richards had appealed the partial injunctions against them, the Ninth Circuit sua sponte addressed those District Court rulings, citing "important comity considerations involved." Id., at 615. The court reversed as to the injunctions, holding that the Act contains no "express juris-
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