Shinnecock Urges State Supreme Court To Dismiss Lawsuit Over Billboards

Shinnecock Indian Nation leaders are moving forward with an attempt to dismiss a lawsuit in State Supreme Court targeting the Nation’s billboards along Sunrise Highway, so that the case can proceed in federal court.

The State Department of Transportation and the State of New York are suing the Nation’s seven Tribal Trustees and their contracted companies over allegations that they are violating state laws by constructing and operating billboards along a Sunrise Highway right-of-way without DOT work permits.

At a hearing on Thursday, June 27, in Riverhead court, the trustees’ attorney, Carson Cooper, asserted that the Nation and the individual Tribal Trustees are immune from any lawsuit in State Supreme Court, a stance that tribal leaders have repeated since the litigation began. He told Justice Sanford Neil Berland that the court does not have jurisdiction to proceed with the case.

Mr. Cooper argued that the court should order a twofold dismissal: to dismiss the case entirely, or to remove the individual Trustees as defendants and replace them with the Nation as one entity if the judge decides to continue proceedings in state court.

Plaintiffs sued the individual Trustees as a way to try to circumvent the Nation’s sovereign immunity. Attorneys representing the plaintiffs cited past cases to support the decision. One was a federal case, Gingras v. Think Finance Inc., which held this year that tribal sovereign immunity did not bar that lawsuit, because plaintiffs may sue individual tribal officials.

Mr. Cooper argued at the hearing that the Nation should replace the tribal leaders in the lawsuit, not because of any immunity stipulation but because the actions of the case directly affect the tribal community.

“This case is about the Nation and the Nation’s use of its land,” Mr. Cooper said to Justice Berland.

Shawn Wallach, the attorney for the billboard companies, what the court collectively called the “corporate defendants,” also argued at the hearing that the companies being sued—Digital Outdoor Advertising, LLC, Idon Media, LLC, and Outdoor, Inc./Idon Media—should all be replaced with Iconic Digital Displays, LLC, with whom the Nation solely contracted for the project.

In response, plaintiff attorneys Susan Connolly and Rosalinde Casalini presented a highly redacted copy of the contract agreement and said that the full agreement should be reviewed before determining whether to modify the defendants.

Justice Berland reserved his judgment and took the arguments under advisement, encouraging the parties to talk among themselves to try to reach a mutual agreement.

The temporary restraining order, which was supposed to end Thursday, will remain in effect while the case proceeds, the judge said.

Six days before the hearing, plaintiffs filed an amended complaint on June 21 alleging that the Nation’s Westwoods property, where the billboards are being erected, is not sovereign land, because it is separate from the Shinnecock territory that is the reservation just outside Southampton Village.

The 96-acre Westwoods property is five miles to the west of the territory, across the Shinnecock Canal.