County seeks $1.2M in costs, fees in suit

SANDPOINT — Bonner County is seeking approximately $1.2 million in attorney and expert witness fees from the developers of SilverWing at Sandpoint, according to U.S. District Court records.

The motion for costs and fees follows Judge Edward Lodge’s dismissal of SilverWing’s claims that its constitutional rights were violated in its dealings with county officials.

“In almost three years that Bonner County has been forced to defend against this lawsuit, SilverWing has not come forward with one scintilla of evidence that Bonner County acted pursuant to a local policy or custom that amounted to deliberate indifference to SilverWing’s constitutional rights,” Barbara Lichman, the county’s special counsel, and Deputy Prosecutor Scott Bauer said in the motion.

Lichman and Bauer contend that the lack of evidentiary support for the civil rights claims was revealed in the discovery process.

The county’s attorneys said that the costs and fees account for an extensive discovery process which included 27 depositions, a review of thousands of documents and several rounds of written discovery.

Attorney’s fees amounted to $994,788.50 and expert fees amounted to $193,362.74, the motion said.

The county moved for summary judgment on the federal and state law claims and largely prevailed last year. Only one of the state law claims survived the pretrial challenge.

Lodge ordered the case remanded to Idaho’s 1st Judicial District for further proceedings because none of the federal claims remained.

SilverWing’s counsels, Debora Kristensen and Scott Lewis, filed notice on Wednesday that they did not oppose the remand order, court documents show.

SilverWing, which seeks to develop a fly-in housing development on the west side of Sandpoint Airport, sued the county in 2012. The company alleged it was misled about a planned runway relocation and Federal Aviation Administration’s approval of through-the-fence access to airport grounds.

The suit argued that the county violated SilverWing’s constitutional rights via inverse condemnation and equal protection under the law. Those claims, in addition to a state law claim alleging a breach on the covenant of good-faith dealings were dismissed by Lodge last November.

However, Lodge let stand a state law claim of promissory estoppel, also known as detrimental reliance. Lodge held that SilverWing reasonably relied on county representations to its economic detriment.