Great Plains Lending, LLC v. Department of Banking

Citations

• 339 Conn. 112

Syllabus

The plaintiffs, G Co., C Co., and S, appealed to the trial court from the decision of the defendant Commissioner of Banking, who ordered the plaintiffs to cease and desist and to pay certain civil penalties in connec- tion with the commissioner's determination that G Co. and C Co. had violated Connecticut's banking and usury laws by making consumer loans to Connecticut residents without a license to do so. G Co. and C. Co. were created pursuant to the laws of a federally recognized Indian tribe, of which S is the chairman. S is also the secretary and treasurer of both G Co. and C Co. The plaintiffs had moved to dismiss the adminis- trative proceedings initiated by the defendant Department of Banking, claiming that G Co. and C Co. were entitled to tribal sovereign immunity as arms of the tribe and that S shared in that immunity because his actions were undertaken on behalf of those entities in his official capac- ity. The commissioner denied the plaintiffs' motion to dismiss, conclud- ing that, because G Co. and C Co. had failed to demonstrate that they were arms of the tribe, neither they nor S was entitled to tribal sovereign immunity. After the commissioner issued final orders requiring, inter alia, the plaintiffs to cease and desist from violating Connecticut law in connection with their lending activities and S to pay a civil penalty, the plaintiffs appealed to the trial court. The trial court determined that G Co. and C Co. bore the burden of proving that they were arms of the tribe entitled to tribal sovereign immunity, but the court disagreed with the test the commissioner used to determine whether a business entity should be considered an arm of an Indian tribe. Specifically, the test the commissioner had applied focused on the financial relationship between the tribe and the business entity. Instead, the trial court 339 Conn. 112 NOVEMBER, 2021 113 Great Plains Lending, LLC v. Dept. of Banking employed a multifactor test that considered not only the legal o