North Dakota v. Minnesota
Headline: Suits over flooding and damages: Court orders North Dakota to pay litigation costs, refusing to split fees and placing the financial burden on the losing State in this adversarial interstate dispute.
Holding: The Court ruled that, because North Dakota’s suit was a litigious interstate dispute funded in part by private contributions, North Dakota must pay the litigation costs rather than have them divided between the States.
- Requires the losing State to pay litigation costs in litigious interstate suits.
- Makes private funds used to pursue a State lawsuit a factor in cost allocation.
- Shifts costs away from equal division in disputes viewed as adversarial.
Summary
Background
The Clerk asked the Court for guidance about who should pay the costs in an interstate suit. North Dakota filed a bill seeking an injunction over overflowed lands and claimed $5,000 for state property damage and $1,000,000 for damage to residents. People whose lands were overflowed raised a fund to support the litigation. When North Dakota’s chief witness, the State Engineer Ralph, was asked about that fund, he refused to answer on his lawyer’s advice.
Reasoning
The opinion, delivered by Chief Justice Taft, reviews prior cases. The Court explains that when disputes are governmental in character, costs have often been split between States. But when a party has a private, litigious interest and the suit resembles private litigation, past decisions have required the losing side to pay costs. The Court found this case to be of that litigious type. Because private funds were used to pursue the suit and the record suggested those funds supported the litigation, the Court placed this case with earlier decisions that taxed costs against the loser.
Real world impact
The Court ordered that the costs be taxed against North Dakota, the defeated party. That means North Dakota must bear the fees in this dispute rather than share them with the other State. The opinion signals that when a State’s lawsuit looks like private litigation and is funded by private contributions, the Court may require the losing State to pay costs in similar future cases.
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