Welfare Rancher Robbins loses at the Supreme Court. Score another victory for Marvel

[JoseCuervo]

Score another victory for Marvel and the Western Watersheds Project as welfare rancher Robbins loses at the Supreme Court...

Rancher's tactics didn't fly

By BRODIE FARQUHAR
Star-Tribune correspondent
with wire reports
The legal battle between the Bureau of Land Management and Hot Springs County rancher was much more a fight over tort damages than a battle over grazing on public lands, said an attorney for a conservation group.

Laird Lucas of Advocates for the West, an Idaho-based legal firm representing the Western Watersheds Project, had earlier sued Harvey “Frank” Robbins Jr. to block a “sweetheart” settlement between Robbins and the BLM. The deal would have wiped Robbins’ record clean of a lengthy laundry list of grazing and trespassing violations.

Lucas and Western Watersheds won that battle, and Robbins no longer has a special deal with BLM officials.

“We didn’t get involved in this lawsuit, because we didn’t feel we had anything to add," Lucas said.

Robbins lives at Hamilton Dome in Hot Springs County and is the owner of the High Island Ranch, the HD Ranch and the Owl Creek Ranch -- about 55,000 acres of private land and 55,000 acres leased from the BLM. That makes him one of the top-10 biggest private property landowners in Wyoming.

Scion of a wealthy Alabama family with solid Republican Party connections, Robbins moved to Wyoming in 1994 “to hunt and ranch,” raise cattle and sell the cowboy cattle-drive experience to tourists.

When the BLM discovered that it hadn’t renewed an easement to access BLM lands isolated within Robbins’ properties, Robbins wasn’t interested in granting an easement.

That’s when the trouble started to get hot. Robbins maintained that his refusal to grant an easement launched a BLM vendetta to take away his grazing permits, harass his cattle-drive customers and put him out of business.

Suits and counter-suits started going back and forth between the BLM and Robbins. Rather than allow the lawsuits to play out, top Interior Department officials instructed the BLM Worland office to back off enforcement actions while the settlement was negotiated.

Claiming harassment, Robbins found a receptive audience when he traveled to Washington, D.C., in 2002, to complain to higher officials in the BLM and Interior Department. By January 2003, he’d secured the unique settlement agreement, under which nine years of Robbins’ alleged violations were essentially forgiven, Robbins could continue to graze his cattle on BLM allotments, he gained considerable flexibility in grazing management, and his grazing levels would be set without conducting an environmental assessment. In turn, Robbins agreed to allow the BLM access to BLM lands that he leases, but did not agree to drop his lawsuit against individual BLM employees under a federal racketeering law.

During the terms of the settlement, only two people could have cited Robbins for violations of BLM regulations: then-BLM Director Kathleen Clarke and the Wyoming BLM director, Bob Bennett.

The settlement didn’t last long, partially due to legal pressure from conservation groups, an internal investigation by the Interior Department’s inspector general, and because the BLM said Robbins continued violating grazing permits.

To court

Rather than continue sparring with the BLM over grazing violations, Robbins and his attorney, Karen Budd-Falen, took a new approach: a Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act claim and a similarly grounded claim that BLM employees had violated Robbins’ Fifth Amendment rights.

The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had ruled that the federal employees did not have immunity from the Fifth Amendment claim or the allegations under the racketeering law. But the nation's high court found otherwise Monday, rejecting the Fifth Amendment claim on a 7-2 vote and the racketeering case 9-0.

Lucas said the lawsuit was a creative legal tactic used by Robbins’ legal team to picture the rancher as “a little guy versus the big, bad government.”

It didn’t work, Lucas said, because the majority of the court wasn’t willing to create a new arena of claims against the federal government, based on this case.

Budd-Falen said Monday she was disappointed by the Supreme Court ruling.

“It looks like the government can use any means to coerce individuals to give up easements,” she said, referring to the large number of harassing tactics allegedly used by the BLM.

She said it was too early to comment on what action, if any, Robbins would want to take now. He has yet to grant an easement to the BLM.

“I haven’t even had a chance to talk to him,” Budd-Falen said.

Lucas said Budd-Falen lost even after she’d exaggerated Robbins’ claims against the BLM employees. Lucas noted that all of Robbins allegations were accepted by the court as true, at face value, without determining whether those allegations were true or not.

“They were not true,” he said. “They were mountains made of molehills.”

Jeff Ruch, executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Ethics, said he was pleased with the court’s verdict.

“Public employees are free of the threat of being sued for doing their jobs,” Ruch said.

 

[BuzzH]

The right decision was made.

 

[A-con]

Yes, it was the right decision for Jose to return to HuntTalk and keep us all amused. Not a bad court decision eather.

 

[mtmiller]

Claiming harassment, Robbins found a receptive audience when he traveled to Washington, D.C., in 2002, to complain to higher officials in the BLM and Interior Department. By January 2003, he’d secured the unique settlement agreement, under which nine years of Robbins’ alleged violations were essentially forgiven, Robbins could continue to graze his cattle on BLM allotments, he gained considerable flexibility in grazing management, and his grazing levels would be set without conducting an environmental assessment.

Thanks WO. On a side note, I assisted in a Washington Office field tour the other day. First show-and-tell should have been how to properly, and effectively, open and close a fence gate.

 

[AZ402]

Jose wins the longest thread title in HT history, congrats. By the way, where ya been hiding? Did CJ or cheese send you a computer virus? Or was your Linux software acting up?

 

[JoseCuervo]

Jose wins the longest thread title in HT history, congrats. By the way, where ya been hiding? Did CJ or cheese send you a computer virus? Or was your Linux software acting up?

Been travelling and coaching HS basketball for the last 4 weeks. Between Varsity and JV, probably coached 35 games, and watched another 25. 12 more games this weekend with All-Star College exposure team. I am exhausted from kids, parents, and miles behind the windshield watching the Pacific Northwest get closer.....