Washington ? A federal appeals court threw out a contempt ruling Friday against Interior Secretary Gale Norton, saying she cannot be held accountable for her predecessors’ mismanagement of a multibillion-dollar trust fund for American Indians.

The three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia also ruled unanimously that Norton’s conduct did not constitute fraud. In issuing contempt citations last September against Norton and the assistant secretary for Indian affairs, Neal A. McCaleb, U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth ruled that by their actions they had defrauded his court.

“She simply cannot be held criminally to account for any delay that occurred prior to her assuming office,” Chief Judge Douglas Ginsburg wrote for the panel.

Lamberth had reprimanded the pair harshly for what he said were attempts to hide their failures to comply with his 1999 order to account for royalties.

The panel also threw out McCaleb’s contempt of court citation because they said it didn’t specify an act or omission.

Interior Department spokesman Dan DuBray said Norton and McCaleb were pleased with the ruling.

The case against the officials grew out of a $137 billion class-action suit filed in 1996 on behalf of more than 300,000 Indian plaintiffs. The suit alleged the Interior Department failed to manage properly oil, gas, mining and timber royalties from land the government assigned to Indians more than a century ago. The department believes the figure is much lower.

The Interior Department has spent more than $600 million to comply with instructions from both Congress and Lamberth, but accounting problems persist. Norton has blamed most of the problems on previous administrations and said most of her energy was devoted to fixing the mismanagement of the Indian royalties.

Lamberth is considering a final ruling in a 44-day trial that ended this month over which plan he should accept for straightening the mismanaged Indian trust fund accounts that go back more than a century.

“We’re waiting to see the results of that trial. I don’t know that the ruling has an impact on that,” DuBray said.

Keith Harper, an attorney for the Indian plaintiffs, called Friday’s ruling disappointing but said it didn’t reflect the merits of the case and should not be viewed as an attempt to rein in Lamberth or exonerate Norton.

“The central issue is still whether they’re going to comply with their trust fund duties,” he said.