Awards Banquet

Parker to receive Jameson Award at Annual Meeting

Billings lawyer Mark Parker has been selected the winner of the State Bar of Montana’s 2021 William J. Jameson Award, the bar’s highest honor.

Parker, president of the State Bar in 2014-15, is a partner at Parker, Heitz & Cosgrove in Billings. He will be presented with the award at the Awards Banquet at the Bar’s Annual Meeting in September.

Meanwhile Kayleigh Morine and David Morine were named the winners of the Bar’s George L. Bousliman Professionalism Award. The two, longtime coaches of Helena High’s Mock Trial team, were instrumental in starting the Montana High School Mock Trial competition, which kicked off in 2019.

Look for profiles of these and other award winners in the October edition of the Montana Lawyer.

Also honored at the Annual Meeting will be members of this year’s class of 50year lawyers:

Ronald A. Bender, Missoula; Alexander Blewett III, Great Falls; Jerry Brooke, Fort Benton; Lon J. Dale, Missoula; Harold V. Dye, Missoula; Norman H. Grosfield, Helena; Channing J. Hartelius, Great Falls; Peter M. Meloy, Helena; Michael J. Milodragovich, Missoula; Robert J Sewell, Bigfork; Kenneth D. Tolliver, Billings; Thomas J. Lynaugh, Billings; Sam E. Baker, Seattle; Roger A. Barber, Whitefish; C. Ed Laws, Billings; Wilfried Royer, Kalispell; Jeffrey W. Sogard, Polson; Leslie S. Waite, Great Falls; John P. Atkins, Bozeman; Gregory L. Hanson, Philipsburg; Robert M. Knight, Missoula; Barry T. Olson, Great Falls; Nick S. Verwolf, Bellevue, Washington; Robert G. Franks, Lincoln, California; Jack K. Morton, Missoula; J. David Penwell, Bozeman; John L. Pratt, Las Vegas; George Rouff, Yuma, Arizona.

Annual Meeting oral argument

As has become tradition, the Montana Supreme Court will hear a live oral argument at the State Bar of Montana’s 2021 Annual Meeting in Missoula.

The case is Wittman v. City of Billings. in which the owners of a Billings Heights home sued the city over a sewer backup, claiming inverse condemnation. The district court dismissed, holding that because inverse condemnation requires deliberate affirmative action by the municipality to take the property.

The plaintiffs argue that an inverse condemnation claim in Montana does not require proof of negligence or other tortious conduct by the government – only proof that a public use or improvement, as deliberately designed and built, caused a taking or damaging of private property.

Inverse condemnation differs from direct condemnation in that the plaintiff is a property owner seeking damage compensation from a government or utility, rather than a government suing the owner in order to take the property.

The court will hear the argument on Friday, Sept. 10. An introduction to the case will be presented at 9 a.m. with the argument beginning at 9:30 a.m.