Billings County Commissioners, in a 2-1 vote at a special meeting Wednesday, agreed to stop all legal action concerning the proposed Little Missouri River Crossing for 60 days, or until a settlement can be reached to put an end to the condemnation of the Short Ranch property for construction of a road and bridge.

The language of the motion was “to immediately request a stay in the litigation with each of the three relevant courts — Southwest North Dakota District Court, U. S. District Court for North Dakota and the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals — asking those courts to stay any action or deadlines or issuance of any decisions for a period of 60 days to allow time for Billings County and the Short family to negotiate the details of a global settlement of the Litigation … “

The motion was suggested by attorneys for the Short family. It’s likely that the three courts will agree to the stay. It may take a while. But since both sides in the lawsuit now agree that the project is over, it’s likely to happen in January.

Meanwhile, there should be friendly negotiations between lawyers for the county and the Short family, since both sides now agree that the project is over.

Right now, the county owns a strip of land through the Shorts’ pasture in the river bottom that it took through a condemnation process this past year. The county has to do some paperwork giving the land back to the Shorts. A change in the makeup of the County Commission, as I reported Wednesday, paved the way (no pun intended) for that process to start.

And there’s some money in a bank account with the Shorts’ name on it, put there by the county to pay for the land. The Shorts never went to pick it up. So, the county has to do the paperwork to get that back.

And then there’s the “settlement” language in the motion the commissioners passed. I’m not sure what that means exactly. I suppose the Short family could ask to be reimbursed for the lawyers’ fees they incurred during this long battle. I’d certainly think they have some of that coming, but they are not greedy folks, so I don’t know if they’ll ask for that. This was never about money for them. They were offered $20,000 an acre for 66 acres of land— more than a million dollars. An unheard of figure in the North Dakota Bad Lands.

But they didn’t want to “industrialize” their ranch or the Little Missouri State Scenic River Valley.

All they want now, I think, is for the county’s lawyers and engineers to go away and leave them alone. But if they would like to be reimbursed for some of their legal fees, who could blame them? There’s no way to reimburse them for the stress they’ve gone through for the last 15 years.

They’re heroes in my mind. They’ve lived with this nightmare hanging over their heads for a dozen years, fighting to save a small part of the Bad Lands for the rest of us to enjoy for generations to come. But they are carrying on the tradition of Congressman and Grandpa Don Short, who successfully stopped a similar scheme to build a paved “tourist road” through the Little Missouri River Valley, when he served in Congress from 1959-1965.

Congressman Short’s steadfast opposition to a highway through an unspoiled piece of one of America’s scenic national treasures, the Bad Lands, cost him the support of many of his traditional election backers and the state Chamber of Commerce and ultimately cost him his seat in Congress in his last re-election effort.

I was in the room at a public meeting in the North Dakota Cowboy Hall of Fame in Medora in 2012 when Con Short, son of the congressman, stood up and said, “We will get this project stopped. We do not need a bridge across the Little Missouri. Billings County is the prettiest place in North Dakota. Why ruin it with more roads and bridges?”

The congressman would have been proud of his son.

Con Short passed away four years later, in 2016, but his widow and his children dug deep into their pockets, hired a good legal team, and they “got that project stopped.”

And come spring 2025, instead of watching road graders eat away at their precious river valley, they’ll stand on the veranda of their ranch house, not far from the banks of the Little Missouri State Scenic River, and watch their cattle grazing, and the Canada geese flying overhead, and the “deer and the antelope playing,” in the tall grass of what some have called “the best bottom in the valley.”

It’s not quite over yet, not until all the court documents are signed and sealed, and I don’t want to jinx it by declaring victory too soon, but I think the Short family has won the battle. But the REAL winners are the Little Missouri River and the North Dakota Bad Lands. They were worth fighting for.

Oh, and by way, there are a couple of more heroes in this story. For four years, Billings County Commissioner and mostly retired rancher Dean Rodne fought to stop the condemnation process. Rodne spent his life on the land in the Bad Lands and just didn’t feel it was right to take someone else’s land against their will. At Tuesday’s Commission meeting, he said, simply, “It’s time to end it.”

Rodne was joined by newly elected Commissioner Jim Haag, who retired a few years ago after spending his career driving a road grader in Billings County for 37 years. Those ranchers who elected him remembered how he kept their roads open in the winter and graveled in the summer, and thought that now he’d make a good county commissioner.

We all owe Rodne and Haag a big “Thank-You.”

The Billings County Commission meeting Tuesday. (From left) Billings County Auditor Marcia Kessel, Commissioners Steve Klym, Dean Rodne and Jim Haag and Billings County State’s Attorney Pat Weir.

Here’s the first of the legal documents to be filed in this case. It was filed Wednesday with the Southwest North Dakota District Court. More will follow in the federal courts.

STATE OF NORTH DAKOTA

COUNTY OF BILLINGS

DISTRICT COURT

SOUTHWEST JUDICIAL DISTRICT

Billings County Board of County

Commissioners,

Plaintiff,

v.

Sandra Short, David Short, and Donald Short,

Defendants.

Case No. 04-2023-CV-00010

STIPULATED MOTION TO SUSPEND DEADLINES AND SCHEDULE AND CONTINUE JURY TRIAL

[¶1] Sandra Short, David Short, and Donald Short (“the Shorts”) and Billings County Board of County Commissioners (“the County”) move the Court to enter the proposed order suspending deadlines and the case schedule and continuing the jury trial. At its meeting on December 3, 2024 the County passed a motion “to instruct law firm to initiate settlement negotiations today and halt further action on condemnation and have a special meeting tomorrow at 1pm.” This Stipulated Motion is filed pursuant to an “Agreement to Stay Schedule and Continue Trial Pending Settlement Negotiations” entered into by the parties at the County’s December 4 meeting.

[2] The Shorts and the County (hereafter collectively “the Parties”) desire to end the current litigation between them, but given the complexity of settling all of the pending disputes in one global agreement, the Parties are asking this Court to pause and stay any deadlines or decisions in the above-captioned proceedings for a period of sixty days. The Parties also jointly request that the Court continue the January 22, 2025 pretrial conference and February 12-14, 2025 jury trial as scheduled by the Court in Doc. ID #209, and to reschedule these if final settlement is not reached

within sixty days.

Dated: December 4, 2024.

BRAATEN LAW FIRM

/s/ Derrick Braaten

Derrick Braaten (ND #06394)

109 North 4th Street, Suite 100

Bismarck, ND 58501

701-221-2911

derrick@braatenlawfirm.com

ROBINS KAPLAN LLP

Timothy Q. Purdon (ND #05392)

1207 West Divide Avenue, Suite 200

Bismarck, ND 58501

701-255-3000

tpurdon@robinskaplan.com

Attorneys for Defendants Sandra Short,

David Short, and Donald Short

Dated: December 4, 2024.

VOGEL LAW FIRM

/s/ TAMI NORGARD

BY: Tami Norgard (#05374)

Bennett L. Johnson (#08922)

218 NP Avenue

PO Box 1389

Fargo, ND 58107-1389

701.237.6983

Email: tnorgard@vogellaw.com

bjohnson@vogellaw.com

ATTORNEYS FOR PLAINTIFF