AG candidate, lawyer spar over ethics complaints

By DANIEL PERSON Chronicle Staff Writer

When GOP attorney general candidate Tim Fox made public his charge that a Great Falls lawyer had run afoul of proper attorney conduct during Fox’s primary race, Fox himself may have violated the same code of conduct.

A Montana Supreme Court rule calls for all complaints made to the State Bar of Montana to remain confidential until they are investigated.

But Wednesday, Fox, a Helena attorney, filed such a complaint and made it available to several reporters.

Fox’s complaint to the Montana Bar involved Great Falls attorney Tom Boland for his role in autodial calls made to Republican voters shortly before the June 3 primary encouraging them to vote for Lee Bruner, Fox’s only opponent in the primary.

In the calls, a recorded voice made disparaging comments about Fox, including that he “represented criminals and drunk drivers.”

The calls were paid for by Citizens for Strong Law Enforcement, a political action committee of which Boland is the treasurer.

In his complaint, Fox objected to some of the charges made in the calls, and said autodial calls are outright banned by Montana law. Given that Boland is a member of the Montana Bar, his actions should be investigated by the association, Fox said in the complaint.

Boland said Thursday he had not yet decided whether he will file a complaint against Fox for publicizing the complaint.

“If I do decide to do it, I won’t do it the way he did it,” Boland said.

The reason complaints like the one filed by Fox are required to remain confidential is to

protect the reputation of the accused lawyer until the charges can be investigated. In that regard, Boland said, “the damage is done.”

“There’s not a lot I could do except restore it,” he said.

Fox’s campaign manager, Chuck Denowh, said Boland was trying to set up a “smokescreen” to divert attention from his own wrongdoing.

“He knows he did something wrong and now he’s trying to point the finger at someone else,” Denowh said.

Furthermore, Denowh said, Fox’s release of the complaint to the state press was not a violation of the Supreme Court rule because all the information contained in the complaint was already public record.

“Everything that is in that complaint was in the newspapers,” he said.

Boland, a trial lawyer and Democrat, acknowledged there is a law against autodial messages like the ones put out by his group, but said many politicians, including Gov. Brian Schweitzer and U.S. Rep. Denny Rehberg, have used them all the same.

“It’s widely understood that it (the law) is a violation of free speech,” he said.

No county attorney in Montana has ever tried to prosecute someone for violating the law.

Boland said he did not want Bruner, a Butte Republican, to win the attorney general election, but supported him in the primary because he thought Bruner would have been a better attorney general.

“I thought it would have been a better contest,” he said.

Daniel Person can be reached at dperson@dailychronicle.com or 582-2665.

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