Nevada v. United States
United States Supreme Court
463 U.S. 110 (1983)
In 1913 the United States (plaintiff in the original suit) sued to establish Truckee River water rights for the Pyramid Lake Indian Reservation and the Newlands Reclamation Project, a federal irrigation project. That suit, the Orr Ditch litigation, took 22 years and ultimately allocated water rights among the reservation, the reclamation project, and private landowners. In 1973 the United States filed a new suit seeking additional water rights for the reservation, this time framed as protecting the tribe's fishing rights rather than irrigation rights. Nevada (defendant) and other parties argued the new claim was barred by res judicata because it involved the same water rights already decided in Orr Ditch. The district court agreed and dismissed the case, and the Supreme Court granted certiorari.
Whether the United States is barred by res judicata from relitigating Indian water rights that were already fully litigated and decreed in a prior suit involving the same parties.