Game warden awarded settlement from state, co-workers

Bill Gang

Thursday, Feb. 19, 1998 | 10:25 a.m.

There was something fishy in the way two state wildlife officials treated a co-worker in Lincoln County -- filing illegal trapping charges against him in apparent retaliation for his testimony at an earlier court hearing supporting a Las Vegas hunter.

The feud wound its way to Federal Court in Las Vegas and a jury didn't like the way it smelled.

On Wednesday, after two days of deliberations, the jury awarded state Fish and Wildlife Department Game Warden Bart Tanner $330,000.

The bulk of the award will come from state coffers, although the $70,000 in punitive damages may have to be paid by Tanner's rivals, Head Game Warden Frank Chaves and Game Warden Dennis Roden.

Tanner's Las Vegas attorney Richard Segerblom said the departmental brouhaha erupted after Tanner appeared in a Lincoln County Justice Court to testify on behalf of a Las Vegas hunter who was cited for possessing six sage grouses instead of the legal limit of four.

Tanner's testimony that he didn't believe the hunter intended to break the law and likely hadn't been informed of the legal limit resulted in the charges being dismissed.

"This guy was crazy enough to believe the truth mattered, not the conviction," Segerblom said of his client, who runs the Key Pittman Wildlife Area near Hiko in Lincoln County, north of Las Vegas.

Segerblom said the federal lawsuit was filed after Roden and Chaves pursued misdemeanor charges against Tanner alleging he trapped a grey fox just before trapping season began.

Tanner was found not guilty, Segerblom said, contending the charge was "in retaliation for his exercising his First Amendment right to speak out."

Roden and Chaves testified in U.S. District Judge Philip Pro's courtroom that they disliked filing the charges against a co-worker but believed that was what they had to do.

But after more than eight hours of deliberations, the jury disagreed.