Court orders Idaho to pay CdA Tribe legal fees for instant racing case, but cuts amount

BOISE – Idaho must pay the Coeur d’Alene Tribe’s attorney fees and costs associated with the tribe’s lawsuit over slot machine-like “instant racing” terminals, the state Supreme Court ruled.

But the high court, in a ruling released Wednesday, reduced the amount of fees awarded by nearly half.

The Coeur d’Alene Tribe sued the state over Gov. Butch Otter’s belated attempt to veto legislation this year repealing authorization for the machines, which were operating at three locations around the state, including the Greyhound Park Event Center in Post Falls. Otter delivered the vetoed bill back to the Senate after the five-day time limit specified in the Idaho Constitution had expired. The justices ruled the bill already had become law, so the veto wasn’t valid.

The tribe sought the repeal legislation because it said the machines weren’t what the horse racing industry promised, and instead were the equivalent of slot machines that competed with reservation casinos.

After losing the case and receiving the attorney fee order, the Idaho attorney general’s office argued that the tribe didn’t submit its invoice for the fees within 14 days of the court’s decision, so it shouldn’t be able to collect anything, arguing with some irony that time limits must be respected.

The tribe said the 14-day rule didn’t apply to this type of proceeding but rather to appeals, and the court concurred.

Justice Warren Jones argued the tribe’s original $95,000 request for fees was “grossly unreasonable” and it should have been no more than $25,000. The majority reduced it to $57,407, an amount Secretary of State Lawerence Denney argued was “reasonable” for the case.

Though the tribe responded to multiple legal arguments from other parties that filed briefs in the case, including instant racing operations from around the state and Gov. Butch Otter, the court’s order of attorney fees was only for the portion of the case in which the tribe responded to arguments made by the main defendant, Denney.

Jones wrote that the case involved only one issue, whether the bill was timely vetoed.

“ Perhaps I understate the issue when I assert that anybody with five fingers and a calendar can determine whether a veto is timely returned,” Jones wrote.