Arizona v. California, 530 U.S. 392, 26 (2000)

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Cite as: 530 U. S. 392 (2000)

Opinion of the Court

might bar a tribe from asserting title even in discrete litigation against third parties, for the 1983 settlement of Docket No. 320 plainly could not qualify as such a judgment. Not only was the issue of ownership of the disputed boundary lands not actually litigated and decided in Docket No. 320, but, most notably, the Tribe proceeded on alternative and mutually exclusive theories of recovery. Had the case proceeded to final judgment upon trial, the Tribe might have won damages for a taking, indicating that title was in the United States. Alternatively, however, the Tribe might have obtained damages for trespass, indicating that title remained in the Tribe. The consent judgment embraced all of the Tribe's claims. There was no election by the Tribe of one theory over the other, nor was any such election required to gain approval for the consent judgment. The Special Master's assumption that the settlement necessarily and universally relinquished the Tribe's claim to title was thus un-warranted. Certainly, if the $15 million payment constituted a discharge of the Tribe's trespass claim, it would make scant sense to say that the acceptance of the payment extinguished the Tribe's title. In contrast, the Ninth Circuit cases cited by the State parties (the correctness of which we do not address) all involved Indian Claims Commission Act petitions in which tribes claimed no continuing title, choosing instead to seek compensation from the United States for the taking of their lands. See, e. g., Pend Oreille, 926 F. 2d, at 1507-1508; Dann, 873 F. 2d, at 1192, 1194; Gemmill, 535 F. 2d, at 1149, and n. 6.

The United States invites us to look behind the consent judgment in Docket No. 320 at presettlement stipulations and memoranda purportedly demonstrating that the judgment was grounded on the parties' shared view, after the 1978 Secretarial Order, that the disputed lands belong to the Tribe. We need not accept the Government's invitation. On the matter of issue preclusion, it suffices to observe that the settlement was ambiguous as between mutually exclu-

417

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