© Concerned Citizens of Western Montana
TENTATIVE CALENDAR FOR THE HEARING TRACK
Many of you who participated in the mediation track of the water court proceedings for the Flathead Water Compact have been placed in a holding pattern until the hearing track.
Because we are getting close to the tentative court deadline to begin the hearing track, we wanted to remind people of Judge Brown’s tentative schedule for this part of the proceedings.
To the best of our knowledge, the water court has not changed its tentative October 1, 2023 date to open the hearing track of the Flathead Compact proceedings.
At the 03/22/23 Status Conference meeting, Judge Brown also mentioned that a formal CONFERENCE CALL COVERING DETAILS OF THE HEARING TRACK, that is more formal in terms of litigation, is expected to be held on OCTOBER 3, 2023.
The order provided for the hearing track conference will include information about how to access the conference.
On or before those dates, the water court will issue a hearing order covering the following items:
- Objectors that are entities must have an attorney for the hearings.
- Individual objectors are able to present their case pro se if they choose to do so.
- A hearing track settlement conference will set formal deadlines for the rest of the case.
- Here are the tentative dates that Judge Brown provided during the 3/22 Status Conference related to key events:
- Deadlines for proceedings that must happen before motions are filed.
- A MOTIONS DEADLINE will be set sometime in the SPRING OF 2024.
- A MOTIONS HEARING DAY will be set for oral arguments on the motions sometime in the SUMMER OF 2024.
- After that, the court will set a trial date for anything unresolved by mediation or motion. TRIAL DATES are expected to be sometime in the FALL OR WINTER OF 2024.
According to Judge Brown, the hearing track is considered formal litigation and all of the issues pertaining to motions will be addressed.
Because the hearing track is considered formal litigation each objector that has not withdrawn their objection will remain on the service list and will be formally notified by the water court as to the steps going forward.
We’ll be sure to notify you of changes to the court’s schedule as we become aware of them.
We’d appreciate you keeping us in the loop concerning any important deadlines and other notifications and activities of the the water court so that we can help get the word out. Please contact us through the CONTACT page of this blog.
As a reminder this information will also be posted on the Water Courts CSKT Compact page located at this link: https://courts.mt.gov/courts/water/CSKT/
Preparing for the Hearing Track
Every objector to the compact understands what’s at stake with this compact. The better prepared we are for what lies ahead, the better for all of us.
With that in mind, we thought it might be helpful for objectors to take advantage of this time to begin preparing themselves on the basics of these proceedings going forward.
Unfortunately there are not a lot of Montana resources to provide to you, but the Colorado Water Court has a very good website that is designed to help pro se people navigate their water court, including videos, forms and other helpful information.
We developed a two page chart for you with hyperlinks to a lot of this information. Our goal with this chart was to provide you with a resource to easily get to the information you may need to prepare.
If you think it might be helpful, we suggest you save it to your computer DESKTOP for quick reference.
Click on the photo below for a pdf version of the two page document with active hyperlinks.
Rules of the Road
Because they are important to your case, we wanted to take time to explain the documents in the RULES OF THE ROAD column on the chart above. That column lists the 4 sets of rules that the Water Court suggested that objectors be familiar with for the Hearing Track of the proceedings.
We went to each of them and found the MCA and other official websites to be cumbersome so we developed a navigable index to each of the four sets of rules.
What is nice about these four RULES documents, is that they are searchable to help you quickly find and link to the rule that pertains to the question you have or the item you are dealing with.
For example, if you are looking for DISCOVERY in the Montana Rules of Civil procedure, open the file and you will see a four page document that lists each of the rules of Civil Procedure.
To SEARCH for a specific topic, open the document, and PRESS the CTRL and F keys on your computer.
A search box will appear.
Type in the word “discovery” and it will take you to every instance of that word that is listed listed in the rules.
Click on the link that you want and it will take you directly to the MCA Rules of Civil Procedure pertaining to discovery.
There will be more to come as soon as we are able to develop material that you might find helpful.
Be sure to check out some of the Colorado videos
Western Montana Water Rights 
Was there something scheduled for the week of Sept 11, 2023?
If it was related to mediation, only people scheduled for a group meeting would have been notified of a meeting.
On the water court page it said this under the mediation tab:
The Mediator for the settlement cases is Madeleine Weisz.
The first Settlement Order “General Mediation Zoom Meeting Information” was issued on April 10, 2023, setting dates for the first set of zoom mediation meetings.
Below are the remaining dates for Mediation:
September 11-13: Zoom meetings will be held
Thanks. So Oct 1, 2023 is still tentative hearing date. And all the Objectors will probably receive confirmation & remote viewing info well B4. Just getting my dates straight. Thanks again
I called the water court yesterday to confirm the dates provided in the March conference call.
They have not gotten back to me, but said that to the best of their knowledge the original estimated dates hadn’t changed,
Here are the tentative dates that Judge Brown provided during the 3/22 Status Conference related to key events:
The HEARING TRACK is expected to begin OCTOBER 1, 2023
A HEARING TRACK CONFERENCE (ZOOM) MEETING is expected to take place OCTOBER 3, 2023.
Judge Brown also mentioned there will be deadlines for proceedings that must happen before motions are filed.
A MOTIONS DEADLINE will be set sometime in the SPRING OF 2024.
A MOTIONS HEARING DAY will be set for oral arguments on the motions sometime in the SUMMER OF 2024.
After that, the court will set a trial date for anything unresolved by mediation or motion. TRIAL DATES are expected to be sometime in the FALL OR WINTER OF 2024.
Once again, thanks for this information. One would hope, and indeed expect an impartial judge in matters. I hope Judge Brown is such a person. However, before any of this starts, I wonder to whom Judge Brown answers and if there is a career path beyond his current position. And, whether that career could be adversely affected if the judge’s decision runs counter to the government’s position. This information would say a lot.
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