Judge: No gravel pit settlement reached with county
Laura Lundquist
(Missoula Current) A Missoula County judge ruled Missoula County jumped the gun when it assumed a settlement was reached regarding a Lolo gravel pit.
Missoula County District Judge Tara Elliot last week denied Missoula County’s request to require the Carlton Protection Trust, a group of neighbors opposing the expansion of a gravel pit south of Lolo, to accept a settlement that the Trust said it hadn't agreed to.
“The County’s inability to produce a signed, written agreement leaves it without admissible evidence to establish the settlement it seeks to enforce,” Elliot said in her decision.
On Feb. 26, attorney Graham Coppes representing the Carlton Protection Trust met with mediator Greg Pinske, Missoula County attorney Erica Grinde, and a representative of the gravel pit owner, Western Materials. Grinde left the meeting at 5:30 p.m. with the assumption she had an agreement with Coppes.
But Coppes and the Western Materials representative continued to negotiate without reaching an agreement. During the negotiations, Pinske sent an email almost two hours after Grinde left mentioning Missoula County’s portion of the talks. But he also filed a report later attesting to the fact no agreement had occurred between Coppes and Western Materials.
But then, on March 2, county attorney Brian West sent a draft settlement to all parties, saying the County Commission would be approving the settlement during their meeting on March 5, so “let me know if you agree with the language.”
Coppes was surprised and responded in a March 5 email saying, “Yes, CPT is in agreement on these terms, but obviously we can’t settle with the County, if we aren’t able to settle with Western.”
The county’s settlement would require the county conduct inspections of the pit - although the county would have no obligation to do anything - and to send a letter to Montana Department of Transportation regarding safety concerns for increased traffic on U.S. Highway 93 near the gravel pit.
That might not go far enough for the Carlton Protection Trust, which sued Missoula County and the County Board of Commissioners in September 2024 over the Commissioners' decision to allow the Hendrickson gravel pit to expand into an adjacent 80-acre property. The Trust’s argument was the county repeatedly allowed the expansion of a gravel pit in spite of the area being zoned by citizen initiative for no industry. The gravel pit was much smaller when the initiative passed in the 1980s, but the county didn’t monitor the pit’s growth.
Missoula County moved to add Western Materials as a defendant in the case. But that meant that all three parties had to agree to a final settlement.
In April, after Missoula County filed its motion with the Missoula County District Court to compel the settlement, Coppes filed his response saying the Carlton Protection Trust did not agree with or sign any settlement, so the case is not closed and negotiations should continue.
Missoula County argued it had an oral agreement with Coppes. But Montana law rejects oral agreements and requires that all agreements be in writing and signed in order to avoid such misunderstandings.
Elliot agreed with Coppes, saying the Legislature put emphasis on “signed, written agreements” during mediation for a reason.
“The signed writing requirement provides a clear, unambiguous act of commitment that all parties have deliberately undertaken, consistent with the Legislature’s evident intent to protect the candor that makes mediation effective,” Elliot wrote.
Missoula County had also asked Elliot to keep the mediator’s report from being used as evidence that a settlement hadn’t been reached. But since Elliot had already determined there was no settlement, the report wasn’t necessary so she didn’t need to do anything with that.
All three parties will have to return to negotiations or proceed to trial.