District court candidates present their cases
Three nonpartisan candidates for Flathead County District Court Judge, Dept. 2, talked at the Glacier Pachyderm Club luncheon at the Red Lion Inn on April 27. The seat is currently held by Katherine Curtis, who is retiring.
• Bob Allison is a fourth-generation Flathead native who graduated from the University of Montana School of Law. With 37 years of civil and criminal practice in Kalispell, he is an acting justice of the peace and a former adjunct instructor at Flathead Valley Community College.
Allison described himself as an outdoorsman who competes in shooting events and teaches firearms safety and concealed weapons permit classes.
Noting that he worked in the past as a public defender, Allison said that won’t make him a lenient judge. He retold the history of the 2004 ACLU lawsuit in Montana that led to the creation of a state public defenders office.
Claiming the charges the ACLU brought against Flathead County were “bogus,” Allison noted that the public defender budget for Flathead County alone climbed from $750,000 when he was the chief public defender under a county contract to about $2.5 million to $3 million under the state.
“It’s a classic example of big government taking over a service that had been done by private business and then quadrupling the cost,” he said, promising to be a fiscally conservative judge.
For more information, visit online at www.boballisonfordistrictjudge.com.
• Bruce Fredrickson grew up on a small farm in North Dakota and worked as a pharmacist before going to law school. He graduated at the top of his class at the University of North Dakota Law School and practiced law in Billings until moving to the Flathead in 1999.
Fredrickson says he’s the most qualified candidate and notes that in addition to his experience in commercial, business and real estate cases, he is “unique” among the three candidates for his many years of “litigating in the trenches.” He has argued cases before the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and the U.S. Supreme Court.
While admitting that he hasn’t practiced as much family law as the other two candidates, Fredrickson said “it’s inevitable that a lawyer in Montana” will at some point become involved in family law. “Kid issues are the big issues,” he said. “I’ve seen the impacts of divorce, and it’s not pretty.”
Fredrickson said he typically worked from 6:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. and on weekends all his life and will continue to do so as a district court judge.
For more information, visit online at http://www.fredricksonfordistrictjudge.com.
• Dan Wilson was born in Billings and graduated from the University of Minnesota School of Law in 1993. He worked as a deputy attorney and prosecutor in Great Falls, Chinook and Kalispell before opening his own law office in Kalispell in 1998.
Wilson was elected Flathead County Justice of the Peace, Dept. 1, in 2010. If elected to the district court, the Flathead County Commissioners would need to appoint a person to replace Wilson as justice of the peace.
Wilson said he’s practiced business law across the state of Montana and argued half a dozen cases in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
At the justice of the peace office, Wilson said he encountered a large backlog of unfinished cases that he cleared up within 10 months. He not only cited his work ethic and discipline but a commitment to make rulings within three days of hearings.
He also described a policy he established to help deal with the large number of jury trial requests. Wilson said he ordered all attorneys with jury trials scheduled for the next week to show up at 4 p.m. on the Friday before to make arrangements. A lot of attorneys didn’t show up at the appointed time, so the number of jury trial requests were significantly reduced.
For more information, visit online at www.wilsonforjustice.com.