Court allows Riverton hospital to enter lawsuit

CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) – Riverton Memorial Hospital may argue that a federal agency's determination that Riverton and surrounding areas remain Indian Country already is hurting the hospital and area businesses, a federal court ruled Wednesday.

The hospital supports the State of Wyoming and others in opposing a 2013 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency decision that Riverton and roughly 1 million acres of surrounding land remain part of the Wind River Indian Reservation.

A two-judge panel of the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled the hospital may file a friend-of-the court brief. The hospital says a recent medical malpractice claim filed against it in tribal court underscores problems with the EPA ruling.

The EPA made its boundary decision in granting a joint application from the Northern Arapaho and Eastern Shoshone tribes to treat the reservation they share essentially as a separate state under the Clean Air Act.

Cody Armajo, a Northern Arapaho woman, alleges in the suit she was taken to the Riverton hospital in February 2013 complaining of an injury to her eye but that a doctor found nothing wrong. She alleges doctors at another hospital later determined she had been shot in the eye.

Lawyers for the hospital argue tribal court is a quagmire where rules and the law are ill-defined.

“This is the impact of the EPA's decision: a non-Indian business has been hauled into tribal court,” they wrote to the appeals court.

The Northern Arapaho Tribe sought to exclude the hospital from the boundary case. It pointed out that past cases against the hospital have been litigated in tribal court and that federal courts have declined past requests from non-Indian parties to move cases from tribal court.

Andy Baldwin, lawyer for the Northern Arapaho, declined comment Wednesday. Patrick Murphy, an attorney representing the hospital, did not immediately return a telephone message seeking comment.

Wyoming says that a 1905 act of Congress opened reservation lands around Riverton to settlement by non-Indians and terminated the land's legal status as Indian Country. The tribe maintains a court rejected that argument in a 1980s lawsuit over Bighorn River water rights.