{"id":11046,"date":"2016-03-18T13:01:06","date_gmt":"2016-03-18T19:01:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lastbestnews.com\/site\/?p=11046"},"modified":"2016-03-18T14:22:11","modified_gmt":"2016-03-18T20:22:11","slug":"high-court-rejects-wittich-appeal-in-corruption-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/2016\/03\/high-court-rejects-wittich-appeal-in-corruption-case\/","title":{"rendered":"High court rejects Wittich appeal in corruption case"},"content":{"rendered":"

This story has been updated.<\/em><\/p>\n

T<\/em>he Montana Supreme Court in a 4-2 ruling<\/a> rejected Republican Rep. Art Wittich\u2019s appeal seeking a dismissal of a high-profile political corruption lawsuit.<\/p>\n

Wittich, who has been accused by the state\u2019s top political enforcer of \u201cquid pro quo corruption\u201d for accepting campaign services he didn\u2019t pay for in his 2010 state Senate race, argued in district court that the lawsuit against him was improper and should be thrown out.<\/p>\n

\"Wittich\"<\/a>

Art Wittich<\/p><\/div>\n

Wittich maintains Commissioner of Political Practices Jonathan Motl had no legal authority to bring the case against him because nobody has ever filed a political practices complaint against Wittich.<\/p>\n

Wittich argued to the high court that Motl failed to satisfy certain prerequisites to filing the lawsuit against him, such as making a preliminary determination that there was sufficient evidence to justify prosecution of the action and perform a preliminary investigation.<\/p>\n

Anaconda Judge Ray Dayton dismissed that argument last week, but Wittich appealed Dayton\u2019s ruling to the Supreme Court in a move that threatened to postpone a highly anticipated jury trial schedule to take place in Helena beginning March 28.<\/p>\n

Motl followed up Wittich\u2019s appeal to the Supreme Court with a motion asking the court to dismiss it on the grounds that the justices recently, and unanimously, ruled on a nearly identical legal issue in a separate case involving the commissioner of political practices.<\/p>\n

In a three-page ruling published on the court\u2019s website around noon on Friday, Chief Justice Mike McGrath ruled that the issues Wittich raised in his appeal are not immediately appealable before trial.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe conclude that the issues on appeal are not matters implicating the court\u2019s subject matter jurisdiction,\u201d McGrath wrote. \u201c\u2026the arguments raised here are matters of statutory and administrative rule interpretation, not subject matter jurisdiction. Therefore, the District Court\u2019s order denying Wittich\u2019s motion to dismiss this case for lack of subject matter jurisdiction is not immediately appealable.\u201d<\/p>\n

Justices Patricia Cotter, Michael Wheat, and Jim Shea affirmed McGrath\u2019s ruling with Justices Laurie McKinnon and Jim Rice dissenting.<\/p>\n

In her dissent, McKinnon accused the court of mischaracterizing Wittich\u2019s argument when it stated \u201cthere is no contention that the COPP failed to exhaust statutorily required administrative remedies prior to bringing this action.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2026[I]n fact, Wittich\u2019s undisputed contention is that neither a complaint alleging Wittich as a violator was filed with the COPP \u2026 nor has the COPP issued a notice and order of noncompliance against Wittich,\u201d McKinnon wrote.<\/p>\n

McKinnon wrote that she believes \u201cWittich is entitled to have his motion to dismiss for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction adequately briefed and considered by the Court.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wittich\u2019s attorney, Quentin Rhoades, issued an email statement Friday expressing surprise at the high court\u2019s handling of the matter, specifically the fact that the court suspended its standard operating rules allowing 11 days to file a response to a motion to dismiss. The court gave Wittich\u2019s side seven days to respond to Motl\u2019s motion.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were not aware of such a request having been made in this case, and we know of no order that had suspended the rules for this case,\u201d Rhoades said. \u201cNormally such matters, again per the internal operating rules of the Court, are put on the agenda for the Court\u2019s Tuesday afternoon motions conference.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn any event, we were of course disappointed the court dismissed the appeal, although we do agree with the reasoning of Justices McKinnon and Rice, who wrote in dissent.\u00a0 We are now looking forward to our day in court before a jury of Mr. Wittich\u2019s fellow Montanans.\u201d<\/p>\n

It is not immediately known what the impact of today\u2019s ruling will be on the jury trial scheduled for March 28.<\/p>\n

Motl declined to comment on the order.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This story has been updated. The Montana Supreme Court in a 4-2 ruling rejected Republican Rep. Art Wittich\u2019s appeal seeking a dismissal of a high-profile political corruption lawsuit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":89,"featured_media":11047,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,14],"tags":[2303,2521,2394,294,3964],"class_list":["post-11046","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-montana","category-news","tag-art-wittich","tag-jonathan-motl","tag-mike-mcgrath","tag-montana-supreme-court","tag-ray-dayton","prominence-category-featured"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11046","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/89"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11046"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11046\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11047"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11046"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11046"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11046"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}