An eight-year legal fight between Montana Diamond Aire owner John Talmage and the city of Kalispell continues to grind along with no end in sight.

Talmage, who wants Kalispell to buy his property in any possible settlement, filed his lawsuit against the city in May 2004.

He sued after Kalispell fenced Talmage’s airplane modification business and fuel pumps off from Kalispell City Airport with a 60-foot rolling gate that he argues provides inadequate access.

A court register lists 164 entries, motions and orders for the lawsuit, which has dragged on through several city managers and two full, four-year terms of the Kalispell City Council.

There was a summary judgment to dismiss the lawsuit in December 2007. An appeal to the Montana Supreme Court found material differences of fact and revived it in 2009. Along the way at least two settlement attempts have failed. Depositions continue to be taken.

The lawsuit was set for trial on Aug. 6. That date was scrapped after both sides failed to show up or even send word for a June 27 pretrial conference.

“I guess we just have to see what happens,” Flathead District Judge Stewart Stadler said to the empty courtroom. No other trial date has been scheduled.

MEANWHILE, costs continue to mount for Kalispell, which is not covered through its insurance for defense of the lawsuit and is paying an outside law firm to defend it.

Kalispell spent about $35,000 on the lawsuit last year, money pulled from the city airport’s enterprise fund budget. City officials propose to set aside $60,000 as a “worst-case scenario” for fiscal year 2012-13, which started July 1.

City Attorney Charlie Harball estimated about $70,000 to date has been spent on the lawsuit.

Costs are mounting for Talmage, too.

“The last thing that I wanted to do was get into a lawsuit. But they pushed me into a corner. I can’t use [my property] for what I bought it for,” he said.

AS JUDGE Stadler wrote in a February 2011 court order, Talmage and Kalispell have had a contentious relationship “nearly from the start.”

Talmage bought Montana Diamond Aire in 2000 and moved to Kalispell to run the business full time in 2002.

Soon after Talmage paid the property off in full in 2003, he and the city wrangled over several thousand dollars of unpaid airport user fees amassed by his business’s prior owner.

Talmage said the city told him to pay the fees, which were not secured with any sort of lien, or else be fenced off from the airport. He said he eventually paid them because he could do that for less than he could hire an attorney to fight them.

“It wasn’t even a month after that and now they’re going to fence me off the airport for security reasons ... There was no fences anywhere,” Talmage said of the airport at the time.

“Here we are eight or nine years later and the entire south end of the airport still isn’t fenced,” he said. “And you can drive right onto the airport between Red Eagle [Aviation] and Rosauers.”

Kalispell later bought the Red Eagle facility for $770,000 in 2005 to lease it back to that business as the airport’s fixed-base operator offering fuel sales, repairs and flying instruction. Red Eagle since has changed owners.

Talmage said the fence and rolling gate, along with a later project that sited new hangars and repainted a taxiway that ran up to his fuel pumps as a vehicle access road, blocked him off the airport and killed his fuel sales.

TALMAGE said he can’t just sell or find another use for his property. Originally it was part of the airport and Kalispell put a covenant on the deed in 1964 saying it can be used only for aviation.

“They even kicked out a draftsman I had renting one little spot out here,” Talmage said.

His lawsuit alleges unreasonable interference with the use of an easement, wrongful interference with business relations, inverse condemnation and infliction of emotional distress.

It also asserts claims against Airport Manager Fred Leistiko for slander and interference with business relations.

“What they’ve done is make my property worthless,” Talmage said. “I want to sell the property and buy a house. I just want it gone ... I don’t want to be here.”

Earlier settlement talks for Kalispell to buy Talmage’s property apparently fell apart after an environmental assessment found signs of contamination from its underground fuel tanks.

None of the airport expansion plans require the property to be acquired, which would need council approval, Harball said.

Kalispell continues to argue it has a right to collect airport user fees and fence its public-use airport as needed, and that Talmage has never been denied adequate access for his business.

The fence and gate were needed at Montana Diamond Aire because that was a point where people were commonly going onto the airport and crossing it, the city argues.

“We have tried in good faith to get this settled in various ways,” Harball said. “It takes two sides to settle. If one doesn’t want to, or if in our judgment is being unreasonable to the taxpayers, we can’t in good conscience jump in and settle it.”

Reporter Tom Lotshaw may be reached at 758-4483 or by email at tlotshaw@dailyinterlake.com.