23 NICS App. 23, HARGROVE v. HARGROVE, ET AL. (September 2025)
IN THE PUYALLUP TRIBAL COURT OF APPEALS
PUYALLUP INDIAN RESERVATION
TACOMA, WASHINGTON
Roleen Hargrove, Appellee,
v.
Dion Hargrove, Trinity Rittierodt, & Plane Hot Rod Smokeshop, LLC, Appellants.
NO. PUY-CV-AP-2025-0050 (September 30, 2025)
Tribal court found that appellant had no ownership or partnership interest in the smokeshop operated by appellee on trust land. Court found no written or oral partnership or sales agreement, no documented contributions or payments by appellant, and no credible evidence of unjust enrichment. Since smokeshop operated on trust land, any sale or lease without federal approval would have been void under federal law (25 U.S.C. §349). Court of Appeals affirmed tribal court’s decision, concluding that the court properly applied the burden of proof and its factual findings were supported by substantial evidence.
SYLLABUS*
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Before: Appearances: |
Lisa L. Atkinson, Chief Judge; Dan A. Raas, Associate Judge; Theresa Thin Elk, Associate Judge. Phillip Curiale, for Appellant; Harold Chesnin, for Appellee. |
OPINION
Per curiam:
BACKGROUND
Roleen Hargrove (hereinafter “Appellee”) sold tobacco products on trust land she owned on the Puyallup Reservation under a license granted by the Puyallup Tribe. Appellee built a permanent structure on her trust property to run the business, adjacent to her personal residence. Prior to her attempted transfer of the business to her grandson, Dion Hargrove (hereinafter “Dion”), Appellee paid for all inventory to stock the business and all expenses related to the business, including payroll for employees including her son-in-law and all relevant taxes, and
23 NICS App. 23, HARGROVE v. HARGROVE, ET AL. (September 2025) p. 24
reported the business on her tax returns. Appellee employed her son-in-law, Richard Rittierodt, to manage and run the business. Her daughter, Trinity Rittierodt (hereinafter “Appellant”) assisted her husband in the performance of some duties at the smoke shop and admittedly took money from the “till” (cash register or other secure payment device) from time to time, which she allegedly reported to her mother, Appellee. The main issue in this appeal is an allegation that the trial court erred in not making a ruling on who the true owner(s) was of the business, with Appellant claiming that she had an ownership interest (ownership argument) as either a co-owner or a partner, or, in the event the court found she did not have an ownership interest, that she was due an unalleged sum for the work that she had provided to the business (unjust enrichment argument). Not one piece of evidence was submitted to corroborate any of Appellant’s claims (other than self-serving testimony by Appellant herself), either of ownership and/or partnership, nor any accounting to substantiate her claims of unjust enrichment. The Tribal Court decided against Appellants on all claims. Appellant appealed.
STANDARD OF REVIEW
The role of an appellate court is to review the decision made by the trial court under applicable court rules or ordinances. Review is limited to the record made at trial, and the appellate court does not substitute its judgment for that of the trier of fact. The trier of fact is in the best position to determine the weight and value of evidence presented at trial.
The issue presented to the Appellate Court is a factual issue, not a legal issue. A trial court is peculiarly suited to resolve factual disputes such as is presented in this case. A trial court has an opportunity not only to hear all the testimony and other evidence, but to also observe the witnesses and determine the credibility of each witness presented. In such a case, an appellate court reviewing the trial judge's actual decision will not overturn that decision unless there is no evidence in the record to support the trial decision. Duenas and Satiacum v. Puyallup Tribe, 1 NICS App. 71, 72 (Puyallup,1990).
Puyallup Tribal Code §4.16.400 governs this appeal:
Except as provided, the decision of the trial court will be reversed, modified, or remanded only (a) Where there has been an abuse of discretion that prevented a party from receiving a fair trial; (b) Where there has been misconduct by the prosecution, Judge, or jury; (c) Where there has been error as to interpretation and/or application of the law by the Judge; (d) Where the verdict or decision is contrary to the law or evidence; (e) Where there has been newly discovered relevant evidence that was not available at time of trial.
None of the parties have alleged that there was an abuse of discretion that prevented them from receiving a fair trial nor did they allege that there was misconduct in the proceedings or that there was newly discovered evidence that was not available at trial. Thus, we must analyze whether there was an error as to the interpretation and/or application of the law by the Judge or whether the verdict or decision is contrary to the law and the evidence. In so doing, we test the legal conclusions of the Trial Court standing in the shoes of the Trial Court, without deference to the Trial Court’s decision. Id.
23 NICS App. 23, HARGROVE v. HARGROVE, ET AL. (September 2025) p. 25
ISSUES ON APPEAL
This appeal involves three issues: (1) Did Appellant and Appellee have an oral partnership for the ownership of the Planet Hot Rod Smokeshop; (2) Was there an oral agreement to sell Planet Hot Rod Smokeshop from Appellee to Appellant; and (3) If there was no shared ownership and no sales agreement, is Appellant entitled to recover the value of her contribution to the success of the Planet Hot Rod Smokeshop from Appellee upon the legal theory of unjust enrichment? The Trial Court answered all three of these questions in the negative after an extensive trial which generated a record exceeding eight hundred pages.
Appellee notes that there is no Puyallup tribal law recognizing any of these causes of action, and thus the Court should proceed with caution in this case of first impression.
THE FACTUAL DETERMINATION OF THE TRIAL COURT
The Trial Court entered careful Findings of Fact. The posture of case made the Appellant the party with both the burdens of going forward on her claims and the burden of proof of her claims. The burden of proof is to establish the facts underlying her claims by a preponderance of the evidence. P.T.C. 4.08.210. Although there was some testimony and evidence in the record that supported her claims, the Trial Court concluded that Appellant had not met her burden of proof as to each claim.
DISCUSSION
Appellant attacks the Trial Court’s Findings of Fact by pointing primarily to her testimony and the record that she made. In essence, she argues that the Trial Court should have believed her testimony rather than the testimony of other witnesses. This is a challenge to the Trial Court’s determinations of credibility. The problem with this argument is that it flies in the face of the holding in Duenas and Satiacum, supra. While more recent Courts have required a modicum of evidence in the record as sufficient to sustain a Trial Court’s finding of fact, see e.g., In Re the Welfare of Five Indian Minors, 9 NICS App. 61 (Feb. 2010), which held that “[T]he factual review undertaken by the appellate court is deferential to the trial court, and requires a review of the evidence ‘in light most favorable to the party who prevailed in the highest forum that exercise fact finding authority.’” (Id. at 69), rather than the Duenas and Satiacum’s total absence of evidence to overturn a finding of fact, in this case there is substantial evidence supporting the Trial Court’s Findings of Fact. The Trial Court is in the better position to determine the credibility of witnesses and evidence, as it can observe the tone of voice, the facial expressions and body language of the witnesses and parties, while the Appellate Court is left with a recording and a bare transcript. The Appellant has not carried the burden in this Court to overturn the Findings of Fact entered by the Trial Court.
The legal conclusions of the Trial Court are reviewed de novo. “The interpretation of a statute is a question of law that appellate courts review de novo under an error of law standard.” (Id., citing, Jeldness v. Pearce, 30 F.3d 1220, 1222 (9th Cir. 1994); Muckleshoot Indian Tribe v. Washington Dept. of Ecology, 112 Wn.App. 712, 720, 50 P.3d 668 (2002). (Id., at 69). The Trial Court concluded that Appellant had neither established that an oral partnership nor an agreement to sell the Smokeshop were proven. It further held that Appellant had not established that she was entitled to recovery under a theory of unjust enrichment.
23 NICS App. 23, HARGROVE v. HARGROVE, ET AL. (September 2025) p. 26
Appellee urges us to carefully examine these legal theories so as not to usurp the legislative prerogatives of the Puyallup Tribal Council to regulate commerce within its jurisdiction. Puyallup Constitution Art. VI, Secs. 1(k) and (l) In light of our determinations below, we do not need to address these questions, and we express no opinion regarding whether the Puyallup Tribe has adopted these causes of action into its jurisprudence.
The best evidence of either a partnership or a purchase and sale agreement is a written document or at least a written trail of dealings from which the terms of an agreement can be reasonably determined. At its most basic form a partnership agreement must establish the parties to the partnership, the business of the partnership, the management roles of the partners, the contributions to the enterprise, and the share of profits and losses for each partner. Where there is no written document, the court may look to the actions of the parties to see if these indicia are present. Here the parties are Appellee and Appellant, and the business is the operation of a retail tobacco outlet under Puyallup laws. The extrinsic evidence (or lack thereof, see discussion of federal issues below) overwhelmingly shows that the ultimate management decisions were made by Appellee in whose sole name the business license was repeatedly issued (not in any partnership name), in whose name all tax and regulatory filings were made, who kept the books and records of the Smokeshop, and whom the evidence and Findings of Fact indicated never gave significant management duties to Appellant. The records and testimony show that Appellee contributed all of the construction funding and the operating capital and that Appellant contributed her time and energy, some of which was compensated by her removal of unspecified amounts of cash from the till. (The Trial Court found that Appellee was aware of these withdrawals and made no objection.) There are no Findings of Fact indicating that Appellant shared in the profits or losses of the Smokeshop in any regular or calculable ways. In addition, as discussed below, were there a partnership, a formal written lease of the property to that entity approved by the United States would have been required by federal law. The Trial Court did not err when it held that there was no partnership entity created between the Appellee and the Appellant.
Any purchase and sale agreement (e.g. in this case as alleged by Appellants) must identify with calculable certainty identity of the seller(s) and the buyer(s), the item(s) which are sold, the price to be paid and the terms under which these payments are to be made. Washington’s version of the Statute of Frauds requires a written instrument if the sale involves real property or cannot be performed within a year (Powers v. Hastings, 612 P.2d 371 (Wash. Supreme Court 1980), although the Puyallup Tribal Code does not yet address these issues. Once again, the evidence shows that the parties to such an agreement could well have been the Appellant and Appellee, and the subject of the sale was the Smokeshop business. The Appellant is correct that as a theoretical matter, the business could be separated from the trust land upon which is it conducted. However, the business presumably includes the license issued by the Puyallup Tribe and that license is tied to a parcel of trust land on the Puyallup Reservation. Puyallup Tribal Code 3.32.050 License required, states:
Any member operating a cigarette retail shop on the Reservation must first apply for and receive a cigarette retail license from the Tribe. Expired or revoked cigarette retail licenses must be renewed before operation of a cigarette retail shop may continue. No member shall operate a cigarette retail shop on the Puyallup Indian Reservation without a cigarette retail license. Any individual
23 NICS App. 23, HARGROVE v. HARGROVE, ET AL. (September 2025) p. 27
selling cigarettes on trust land must first obtain a cigarette retail license. (Emphasis added).
Appellant was unable to obtain a license from the Puyallup Tribe so long as Appellee held a license for that location. Furthermore, Appellant never made any contributions to the capital or operating expenses of the Smokeshop, let alone any ‘payments’ identified as part of a purchase price. Indeed, there was no purchase price set, either as a monetary payment or as ‘sweat equity’ measured by Appellant‘s work in or for the Smokeshop. The Trial Court did not err when it concluded that there was no agreement to sell the Smokeshop to Appellant Tiffany Rittierodt.
Appellant last argues that if she is not determined to have any compensable ownership interest in the Smokeshop through legitimate means that she is entitled to some other form of compensation through the legal theory of unjust enrichment. In our review of the case, we first look to Puyallup Tribal Code § 4.08.210 “Burden of proof” to determine who has the burden of proving an unjust enrichment claim. PTC § 4.08.210 states that “the burden of proving a civil claim shall be on the party making the claim to prove his or her case by a preponderance of the evidence. A party shall be considered to have met the burden of proof if most of the evidence presented tends to prove that party’s claim.” (Emphasis added). The claims being appealed were pled by the Appellant in her counterclaim against Appellee. As a result, it was Appellant that had the burden of proving the unjust enrichment claim, a burden the trial court correctly applied and ruled upon; thus, there was no error here in the application of the law. We next turn to the trial court’s analysis of the unjust enrichment claim itself.
As this is a case of first impression, the trial court looked to Washington case law for analysis and it is this law we, as the appellate court, will apply, although we express no opinion as to whether the Puyallup Tribe has adopted the jurisprudence establishing a cause of action for unjust enrichment. Young v. Young, 164 Wash.2d 484-485 (2008), sets forth the elements of unjust enrichment: “ (1) a benefit must be conferred upon the defendant by the plaintiff; (2) an appreciation or knowledge by the defendant of the benefit; (3) and the acceptance or retention by the defendant under such circumstances as to make it inequitable for the defendant to retain the benefit without the payment of its value.” The trial court was correct in its application of this standard to the case; there was no error here. It thus comes down to analyzing the facts of the case to determine whether Appellant had met her burden of proof as to all three elements.
As to the first element, the trial court found that Appellant did not meet her burden of proof that a benefit must be conferred upon the defendant by the plaintiff. Instead, the Court found that the Appellant’s work on behalf of the Smokeshop merged with the salary paid to Mr. Rittierodt in his capacity as manager, and that the salary was community property. PTC 7.08.160. There was no testimony or evidence of what exact benefit Appellant conferred on Appellee.
Regarding the second element, Appellee was aware of Appellant’s work in the Smokeshop and made no objections to Appellant’s removal of cash from the till.
The Trial Court was unable to conclude from the evidence that the third element - how much Appellee was benefitted by Appellant’s work - was satisfied. The problem is not the character of that gain; it is that nowhere in the presentation of the claim was it reduced to a figure
23 NICS App. 23, HARGROVE v. HARGROVE, ET AL. (September 2025) p. 28
with any reasonable documentation. Perhaps this calculation is impossible, due to the facts that Appellant took unquantified sums at irregular intervals from the cash till, or the lack of any standard such as hours worked and testimony as to what a fair wage for those hours would have been. On appeal Appellant urged the adoption of large round number, justifying this as “fair.” But the burden of quantifying that number is squarely on Appellant, P.T.C. 4.08.210, and that burden was not met.
Thus, we affirm the holding that Appellee was not unjustly enriched.
FEDERAL LAW CONSIDERATIONS
These Findings of Fact, which none of the parties disputed on appeal, are relevant to applying federal law to this case:
1. Planet Hot Rod Smokeshop was established on a parcel of trust land owned solely by Appellee located within the Puyallup Indian Reservation.
2. Appellee was granted a license under Puyallup Tribal Code Chapter 3.32 in her name alone. PTC 3.32.120-.130 also requires, inter alia, that an applicant be a member of the Puyallup Tribe, and an owner of a parcel of trust land within the Puyallup Reservation. PTC 3.32.160 prohibits the transfer of a license. Presumably, a sale of the business or a change in ownership of the business would require the new owner(s) to obtain a new license.
3. No signed written agreement between Appellant and Appellee regarding the ownership of the Smokeshop existed.
4. At some point, Appellee began the process of selling the Smokeshop to an LLC. owned by her grandson, Appellant Dion Hargrove. As part of the sale both Appellee and the LLC (by its appropriate representative) executed a lease of the trust land. Both parties to the lease intended that it be approved by the United States, as trustee for Appellee; however, the lease was never submitted for approval and was thus never approved.
5. The Tribal Court held that the lease to the LLC was void ab initio because there was no federal approval. No party appealed and that holding is now binding.
Federal law governs the sale and lease of trust land. Recent cases and federal policy have made it unnecessary to determine the exact chain of circumstances that led to the creation of the Puyallup Reservation and the provenance and chain of title of the land upon which the Smokeshop was built and operated. Suffice it to say that any alienation of trust land, including sale or lease, requires approval of the federal government. See, e.g.: 25 U.S.C. §349. The regulations for leasing trust land for business purposes are extensive. 25 C.F.R. Subpart D §§162.005, et seq. The Appellant and Appellee made no attempt to comply with these regulations.
A conveyance of trust land without federal approval is void. Heckman v. United States, 223 U.S. 413, 446-7 (1912). Thus, without federal approval of a written lease to a partnership or of a written contract of sale such an arrangement would be void as matter of federal law. The lack of any evidence that a lease was sought prior to the creation of the LLC is evidence that none existed between Appellant and Appellee. Similarly, were there a written agreement for sale of the land it would need to be approved by the United States. The lack of any evidence of such a
23 NICS App. 23, HARGROVE v. HARGROVE, ET AL. (September 2025) p. 29
written purchase and sale agreement is evidence that there was no such agreement between Appellant and Appellee. Turning to the unjust enrichment claim, in Heckman the Court held that the trust owner was not a necessary party to an action brought by the United States, but that if they were joined, no recovery of the funds paid for the land would be due. While the 1912 characterizations of trust owners are fully outdated, more modern cases have held that in cases of void conveyances there is no recovery of the funds paid if they were to be paid from funds derived from the land subject to the void conveyance. See: Black Hills Institute v. Dept. of Justice, 812 F.Supp. 1015 (D. S.D. 1993), where the Court analogized the holding of trust land and proceeds therefrom to a spendthrift trust with the allottee as the beneficiary. Glass v. Carlile, 640 P.2d 996 (Okla. Civ. App. 1981), but see: United States v. Taunah, 730 F.2d 1360 (10th Cir. 1984), construing a written settlement agreement between heirs.
Of particular relevance and guidance regarding the unjust enrichment claim here is Palm Springs Paint Co. v. Arenas, 51 Cal. Rptr. 747, 242 Cal. App. 2d 682 (CA Ct. App. 1966), where the parties had executed a contract of sale just prior to the land going out of trust status, together with a ‘Side Agreement’ designed to avoid the applicable five-year limitation on leases of trust land. The Court, in addition to holding the contract of sale void because it was executed prior to the land going out of trust and not approved by the United States, relied on Heckman to permit the trust owner to retain the proceeds from the ‘Side Agreement.’
CONCLUSION
Based on the foregoing analysis, this court finds that the trial court did not commit error when it ruled against Appellant on all issues. The trial court’s February 28, 2025, Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law and Judgment (the “Final Order”) is therefore hereby AFFIRMED.
The syllabus is not a part of the Court’s Opinion. The syllabus is a summary of the Opinion prepared by the publishers of this reporter only for the convenience of the reader. Therefore, the syllabus should not be cited in whole or part as legal authority. Only the Opinion, which follows the syllabus, may be cited as legal authority.