SANDPOINT - A Bonners Ferry veterinarian accused of poaching an elk north of Upper Priest Lake has filed a federal lawsuit against the Idaho Department of Fish and Game.

Roland Hall accuses the department of civil rights violations, negligence, intentional infliction of emotional distress, malicious prosecution and slander. The suit was filed in Idaho's U.S. District Court on Monday.

The suit seeks more than unspecified monetary damages and a jury trial. Hall previously filed a tort claim seeking $500,000 in damages from the department.

Attorneys for Hall contend in the suit that the department has a vendetta against their client because of a long-standing dispute over the Continental Mine. Hall is a co-owner of the Boundary County lead and silver mine.

Tailings from the mine have been blamed for sterilizing Blue Joe Creek and a road leading to the site has been the subject of a protracted dispute over forest access, according to published media reports.

Idaho Fish and Game's Panhandle region supervisor, Chip Corsi, said he had not seen the lawsuit and could not comment on it.

Hall and Dennis Liermann Jr. were charged at the felony level with poaching after two eyewitnesses reported seeing Liermann poach an elk in the Trapper Creek drainage on Sept. 14, 2009, the day before the archery season opened.

Hall said in the civil complaint that he was scouting elk on the day in question and had no knowledge that Liermann intended to unlawfully kill two bull elk.

Charges against Hall, 58, were amended several times before they were dropped altogether. Prosecutors in Boundary County moved to dismiss the case against Hall after 1st District Judge Benjamin Simpson ruled Hall's remarks to investigators inadmissible because he was not advised of his Miranda rights.

Liermann, a 34-year-old from Naples, ultimately pleaded guilty to misdemeanor poaching charges and was sentenced to 60 days in jail with 54 days suspended.

Hall alleges in the suit that Fish and Game knew he was innocent of the crime but pressured his prosecution, withheld exculpatory evidence and issued press releases containing information it knew to be false.

The department and two of its conservation officers, Rick Bogar and Robert Soumas, are named as defendants in the suit.