WALLACE — A lawsuit over Shoshone County’s $2 million sheriff’s levy was dropped this month after both sides agreed to cover their own legal costs. 

The suit, filed in September by attorney Anthony Garcia on behalf of resident Matt Beehner, claimed the Shoshone Board of County Commissioners (BOCC) improperly approved a resolution allowing the county to pursue a two-year, $2 million override levy to address budget issues at the sheriff’s office on the November ballot.

The levy failed in November, securing only 44.07% of the votes needed to pass. 

On Dec. 4, the parties agreed to pay their own legal fees in exchange for the plaintiff filing a motion to dismiss, following a 2-1 vote by the commissioners. 

Before the Nov. 4 election, Shoshone County Prosecuting Attorney Ben Allen filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit, which he believed a court would have granted. But the real debate centered on how much time and resources the county wanted to spend fighting a case where the central issue — the levy — had already been decided and failed. 

Allen said the only potential benefit for the county would have been pursuing dismissal in court and being awarded costs and legal fees, but even that wasn’t guaranteed. 

“To proceed further with the litigation would have certainly expended even more time and without any absolute certainty that the county would ultimately be awarded fees and costs at the end of litigation,” Allen said. “Prior to the complainant proposing a stipulation to the BOCC, the county had expended a great deal of time preparing a defense for the county on this matter.” 

Commissioners Melissa Cowles and Jeff Zimmerman echoed concerns about additional costs and the possibility that a judge might side with them but not award fees. 

“We would be, in a sense, gambling on this decision,” Zimmerman said. “It would basically be a 50/50 on if we would incur those fees.” 

Zimmerman added that the county already faces a significant caseload involving liability. 

“I think those resources are stretched as they are,” he said. “My concern is strictly, can we do it? Can we afford it? Do we have the time and resources to do it?” 

Commissioner Dave Dose, a central figure in the original lawsuit, said he wanted the county to see the case through and try to recoup litigation costs, but he was outvoted. 

During the Dec. 4 meeting, Allen estimated the county had spent roughly $5,000, a figure Beehner accused Allen of inflating during a separate meeting a week later. 

Beehner claimed that based on Allen’s published wage, his hourly rate is $64.17. At that rate, Allen would have needed to spend at least 78 hours to reach $5,000. Meanwhile, Beehner said his attorney billed him for only 8.4 hours of work. He also suggested that the only way Allen’s number was accurate was if he contracted the work to an outside law firm.  

Allen said he kept a detailed log of his and his office’s efforts concerning the lawsuit, which totaled 82 hours, or $5,261.94. 

“This highlights an important issue with public entity representation. It oftentimes costs a lot less money to make accusations against a public entity than it does for the public entity to defend against those accusations,” Allen said. “Unfortunately, when a matter is voluntarily dismissed as was the case in this instance, those costs of defending the public entity against claims is not recovered and now it is ultimately borne by the taxpayers as staff time and efforts were forced to be diverted from other day-to-day tasks in order to respond to the matter of litigation.” 

Following the BOCC’s decision, Beehner spoke publicly about his choice to dismiss the lawsuit. 

“Eleven years I’ve been doing this, I’ve never sat through one of these before,” Beehner said. “I don’t want to go too far, but I thought we had a strong case. But it’s not worth following up on because all you’re going to get is a $250 fine. So it’s not worth us spending another $5,000 to $6,000 on.”