Bozeman (Montana) Agrees to Pay Bad Boy Bail Bonds $100K for Alleged Blacklisting

From Daily Montanan (Darrell Ehrlick) Wednesday:

Looney, who owns Bad Boy Bail Bonds in Gallatin County, took two Bozeman municipal judges to court, alleging that they had unfairly and illegally discriminated against his business.

This week, the City of Bozeman has settled with him for $100,000….

Looney purchased the name of a former bail bond company, Bad Boy Bail Bonds, but didn't purchase the business itself. However, several bonds issued under the name had been forfeited, and the two municipal judges — Colleen Herrington and Karolina Tierney, ordered Looney to pay the amount, $1,585, which he originally refused.

When Looney attempted to explain that the had purchased just the name and not the company or its book of business, the judges ordered that Bozeman municipal court not accept bail bonds from Bad Boy Bail Bonds, leading him to allege that he was losing tens of thousands of dollars. At one point, other counties began to follow suit.

You can read Judge Donald Molloy's Mar. 17 decision in Looney v. Tierney (D. Mont.) denying judicial immunity, which notes that plaintiffs had alleged defendant judges "committed constitutional violations when they banned Plaintiffs from submitting bail bonds in their court until Looney agreed to withdraw a judicial ethics complaint filed against Judge Tierney."

Matthew Monforton represents plaintiffs.

Comments

[Bill Poser]

Why is the City paying the entirety of the settlement? It appears that the judges are personally liable.

And how the heck did this happen? I wondered whether Montana has non-lawyer low-level judges, but these two are both lawyers. How did they not understand that someone can purchase a business name but not the business and its liabilities?

[Krayt]

I can see the judge being pissed off if "buying the name but not the business" was some kind of dodge to avoid liability for old bonds, but if that's legal, well...

[Bill Poser]

When you buy just the name of a business, the previous owner retains all the other assets of the business as well as its liabilities. The court could have gone after the original business for the bond. I don't see any scam here. If anyone was deceived, it was people in need of bail bonds, who might have been deceived into thinking that the reputation of the old business carried over to the new one (which wouldn't seem to be an important consideration in the bail bond business).