Battle over Port Authority's business dealings continues in court filings

Attorneys for the Lincoln County Port Authority and a Libby businessman questioning how it has conducted business have recently filed briefs arguing their respective positions.

Daniel Torgison, through his attorney, Amy Guth, filed the application April 10 seeking a restraining order and an order for the defendants to appear before District Judge John Larson. He also filed an affidavit for a preliminary injunction.

Torgison is alleging Port Authority members, past and present, failed to follow state law on public notices and meetings. He is also seeking a restraining order to prevent further actions by the entity in an alleged attempt to sell more public land to private individuals without public scrutiny.

The defendants include the Port Authority, Lincoln County Commissioners Brent Teske, Jim Hammons and Noel Duram and John Does 1-15.

In a May 8 court filing, Reid Perkins, the Missoula-based attorney hired to fight the suit and defend the county, responded.

Among many arguments, Perkins wrote that Torgison’s motion was, “incredibly broad, seeking a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction preventing the Port Authority and the county from acting on any matter related to the decisions made by the Lincoln County Port Authority between May 2022 until April 2025.”

“The request appears to be to pause all actions related to decisions made over a three-year period. If granted, the injunction would effectively allow a single citizen to undo years of government work,” Perkins wrote.

The attorney also wrote that of the five current Port Authority Board members, Chair Jerry Bennett, county Commissioner Brent Teske, Tony Petrusha, Chris Bache and Kevin Peck, several were not on the board at the time transactions were made involving Noble Industries and Thompson Contracting.

“The Lincoln County Port Authority is volunteer,” Perkins wrote. “They do not receive any salary. While the Board does the best they can, many are from the community and do not have years of experience in government. Accordingly, there is a bit of a learning curve for each Board member.”

But in Torgison’s response, filed May 21 in Lincoln County District Court, he argued the defense’s assertion is not true, citing the prior work of Teske, Bennett and Petrusha and others.

“Lincoln County Port Authority Commissioner Brent Teske is a Lincoln County Commissioner and former Libby City Mayor,” Guth wrote in response. “Port Authority Commissioner Jerry Bennett is a former state legislator and former Lincoln County Commissioner. Petrusha is a long term member of the Lincoln County Park Board.

“Lincoln County Commissioners are expected to be versed in Montana’s open meeting law. Accordingly, knowledge of Montana’s open meeting laws must be imputed to the Port Authority. Excusable neglect is not an exception to Montana’s open meeting law, especially, excusable neglect spanning the course of two years,” Guth wrote.

Teske became a city councilor in 2013, was appointed mayor in 2016 and joined the county commissioners in August 2021.

Bennett was a member of the Montana House of Representatives from 2008 to 2016 and a Lincoln County Commissioner from 2016 to 2022. He has also been a Port Authority board member since 2021.

Perkins also included in his response the history of the Port Authority’s relationship with Noble Industries, which began in March 2022 when both agreed to a Memorandum of Understanding that allowed Noble to explore business and development opportunities on certain parts of land in the Kootenai Business Park.

The document said Noble Industries would incur related costs and undertake due diligence. Then, on Jan. 25, 2023, both agreed to allow Noble to begin site clean-up work and pre-development services in anticipation of Noble’s eventual purchase of the property.

When a Dec. 1, 2023 transaction was made between Noble Investment Properties and the Port Authority to sell 108.16 acres of authority property, Bennett, identified as the Port Board Chairman, was the person who signed the contract.

The purchase price was $1.6 million with Noble receiving a $600,000 credit for doing cleanup work already performed under the lease agreement.

In a Feb. 7 interview with The Western News, Noble Investments’ Chris Noble and Tina Oliphant shared that a Comfort Inn Hotel will be built in the Kootenai Business Park.

“This has been a real need for our community for quite some time,” Noble said. “It will bring in jobs and we believe it will spur further development in the park.”

The 80-room hotel in a multiple-floor story building will also feature a conference room where meetings can be held.

In the May 21 court filing, Guth explained that Torgison sent a letter on March 13 to the Port Authority and Lincoln County Attorney seeking information about Port activities between May 2022 and the present. 

Lincoln County Marcia Boris said because of the volume of materials sought, the Port Authority requested that it be given until April 13 to provide the requested information. On March 18, Torgison narrowed his request to matters relating to Chris Noble and Noble Excavating. Ten days later, the county attorney’s office provided the documents, which Guth says proves the Port Authority sold real property to Noble Investment Properties without an appraisal, an auction or public scrutiny.

April 1, Torgison filed a complaint alleging open meeting laws were violated. Discovery requests followed in an attempt to understand the nature of all transactions taken by the Port Authority during what the plaintiff called its “dark” period.

Guth wrote that the action was brought to consider whether any, all, some or none of the actions taken by the Port Authority in violation of Montana’s open meeting law should be voided.

In terms of the public participation element of the suit, the Port Authority also argued that Torgison’s suit included a 2023 version of state law, not a 2022 version that was in effect at the time of the decision to sell the property to Noble.

Perkins wrote, “In 2023, the Montana Legislature amended MCA 2-3-103 to add procedures for publishing notice. The version was in effect until Oct. 1, 2023.”

Perkins asserted the Port Authority Board posted advanced notice of its meetings at the courthouse where its meeting were held and the public was allowed to attend meetings and to comment on agenda items.

He also wrote that, “because the Board does not have an attorney that attends its meetings regularly, it was not immediately aware of the change in law effective Oct. 1, 2023.”

The Port Authority said that it “inadvertently failed to publish its agendas in a newspaper of general circulation or on its website for a period of time. It believes it is now in compliance with the new requirements.”

The Port Authority also argued that following a Montana Legislature change in 2023 that Torgison’s effort to obtain a preliminary injunction does not meet the most recent standard.

According to Perkins’ argument, the statue change meant a party, such as Torgison, seeking an injunction must satisfy all four parts of the standard and not just one subsection as previously allowed.

The legislation was introduced by Great Falls Republican Steve Fitzpatrick, who represents Senate District 10. It passed both chambers, largely on party line voting.

The bill meant to incorporate the federal standard for a preliminary injunction or temporary restraining order into Montana law as the general standard.

The four parts include that the applicant is likely to succeed on the merits, the applicant is likely to suffer irreparable harm in the absence of preliminary relief, the balance of equities tips in the applicant’s favor and the order is in the public interest.

The Port Authority argues that Torgison is not likely to prevail because the property sale he focused on occurred in 2022 and his suit was well beyond the statute of limitations.

The argument against Torgison’s suit also includes a state law that gives someone 30 days to file the petition.

“In this case, in a town the size of Libby, it is inconceivable that Mr. Torgison did not know of the sale to Noble in 2022, 2023 or even early 2024. At a minimum, Mr. Torgison should have known if he is that concerned about Port Authority business. For that reason, his claim will ultimately be time-barred and should be dismissed.”         

The Port Authority also argued that setting aside years of decisions of will effectively cripple it. 

“It will have to spend a significant amount of time going through minutes to even figure out what decisions were made within the timeframe,” Perkins wrote. It will then presumably have to remake a large number of decisions and in the meantime, local businesses at the business park may be negatively impacted.

“Given that the Port Authority’s decisions were made in good faith in the first place, the end result will be the same but with a substantial amount of additional time from a volunteer group, wasted money and possible damage to a third-party private business.”

In the May 21 Torgison response, Guth argued that recent events prove Torgison’s concerns about the Port Authority’s alleged lack of transparency are warranted.

“In April 2025, the Port Authority, for the first time since May 2022, publicized its minutes on its new official website. The minutes were limited to January, February and March 2025 meetings,” Guth wrote. “These minutes prove that between January and March 2025, the Port Authority hired a forester and a wildfire mitigation specialist. 

“In January 2025, Brent Teske advised the Port Authority Board that Lincoln County would fund the forester and wildfire positions using SRS Title III money committed to the Authority,” Guth wrote. “The Title III funds are earmarked for emergency management spending and may not be used for salary or wages associated with routine duties.”

At the May 7 county commission meeting there was discussion about use of the Title III money and a vote to approve it for the Port Authority’s request to fund the two new jobs was defeated with Hammons and Duram voting against it.

Guth also argued that following the May 7 commissioners meeting, the Port Authority called for a special meeting on May 9 and that it was posted as closed.

“The closed meeting either concerned the failure to achieve SRS III funding or a discussion of litigation in the present case,” Guth wrote. “Neither discussion warrants a closed meeting. Funding for personnel is not the same as a personnel issue. No right to privacy is invoked by discussing general budgetary constraints.”

Torgison’s suit also cited the county’s involvement in the Stinger Welding fiasco more than a decade ago for why the land sales should be part of the public process, namely an auction.

“In 2012, Lincoln County deeded a building on Port Authority property to Stinger Welding. When Stinger breached the terms and conditions, the county sued Stinger while arguing that the deed was invalid because Port Authority property must be sold at a public action,” Guth wrote.