Winning a $27 Million Verdict After YEARS of Fighting with Tim Bechtold [Ep 151]

Tim Bechtold spent years fighting a a civil rights case involving a prisoner from the Montana State Prison System.

In today’s conversation, we look at the intricacies of the case, detailing the client’s wrongful conviction, subsequent assault in a private prison, and the challenges faced due to procedural delays and missed deadlines.

However, the perseverance of Tim and his team ultimately culminated in a favorable verdict and a reward of just over $27 million.

Tim explains the importance of a focus group in shaping their trial strategy and reflects on the quick-paced nature of their trial, as well as the broader implications of justice and advocacy for marginalized communities.

Tim Bechtold is a Montana-based trial lawyer known for his work in civil rights and environmental law.

In this episode, you will learn about:

• How the case of Nate Lake highlights systemic issues in the justice system.
• How the verdict of over $27 million underscores the importance of accountability.
• Why justice for marginalized communities often requires persistence and dedication.
• The role of storytelling in trials that is crucial for juror engagement.

Supporting Resources:

Guest Tim Bechtold of Bechtold Law Firm, Montana.

Contact Tim directly at tim@bechtoldlaw.net

$27.75 million dollar verdict (KRTV news)

Northern Cheyenne v. BIA verdict (Daily Montanan)

Tim’s Environmental Work: https://www.npr.org/transcripts/nx-s1-5416766

2025 Leonard Weinglass in Defense of Civil Liberties Award – AAJ: https://www.justice.org/membership/awards

2025 Montana Trial Lawyer of the Year Award: https://www.monttla.com/?pg=historical

Do you have an upcoming trial and want help writing your opening statement? Book a free call with Elizabeth to see how she can help.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:19.832)
Touch with the emotional birth

Speaker 1 (00:36.024)
Hello and welcome back to the podcast. I’m your host, Elizabeth Larrick, and we are continuing or beginning, I should say, our series where we’re going to talk about the $28 million verdict, but we got to start somewhere. So I’ve invited Tim Bechdel to come and talk about building this case. Tim, welcome to the podcast.

Thanks for having us, Libous.

You are a phenomenal lawyer. I don’t need to tell you that. Okay. Award-winning. You’re doing amazing work. I saw some other stuff just searching you, but I have to tell you, did you know that you’ve been listed as one of the sexiest lawyers in America?

I still can’t believe that Alana Felkin’s cheerleader is more sexy than I.

You’re number 32 according to Business Insider. I just want to point that out to folks. We’re going to have a link to that in the show notes, okay?

Speaker 2 (01:34.306)
No, there you go. Just so know, I’m 30 seconds in last.

In all seriousness, really excited for this conversation, but tell us a little bit about you, your background. I mean, you have been fighting for, you know, people’s rights and taking the underdog for a really long time and doing some amazing work. But tell our audience a little bit about you since you may be new to them.

Well, I grew up on a dairy farm. I do not like milking cows. So I went to Harvard, was a bio major. I worked in the environmental field for a couple of years and then got my master’s degree in environmental studies at University of Montana. A couple of years later, I went to law school and got my JD and began to work primarily in environmental cases. And then by hook or by crook, I got called up by a native family from the Fort Belknap reservation.

who had been involved with environmental stuff and they wanted an attorney to deal with some situation that happened on the reservation. And so I started getting into civil rights cases on reservations. And then that led to a bunch of different cases around the civil rights cases and not just on reservations, but throughout the state of Montana. That’s how I got into civil rights cases, but I still, my caseload now is still.

a significant chunk of environmental cases and a significant chunk of cases for Native Americans and some civil rights cases.

Speaker 1 (03:01.25)
Yeah. I mean, it is amazing the work that you do. You’ve been recognized, I know by the Montana trial lawyer’s association for, know, again, fighting for the underdog here every single time. So I definitely appreciate the work that you do. And I even saw just getting ready to talk to you today. You’ve got a pretty large environmental case going in Seattle right now. And so that’s, that’s a pretty big one too. So we’ll have a link to that in the show notes for folks who are interested, but I want to talk about this amazing verdict that you got.

for a prisoner involved in the Montana State Prisoner System. And it has a pretty storied past. I mean, this thing had been out there for a while. So tell us a little bit about how you got this case and really why you took it.

Well, it turns out that a woman named Mindy Driscoll, while she was in law school, had worked on the Innocence Project on this case for this guy named Nate Lake. Nate Lake, who was our client in this case, he was a guy who grew up near Missoula, was a high school athlete, very good student in high school, went on to the University of Montana, intended to major in pharmacy and become a pharmacist.

And about the time he was about 20 years old, he developed schizophrenia. It’s an affliction that’s not uncommon among young men of that age. And unfortunately, Nate was one of those people who developed schizoaffective disorder. And so he decided to live the life of Jesus and became homeless and depended upon what people would give him. For years, he slept by a log next to the river.

near Missoula. He did some odd jobs, landscaping sometimes. And then he was accused of attempted sexual assault. The case went to trial and over the course of trial, the trial judge decided to prevent some DNA evidence, very exculpatory DNA evidence from being admitted into evidence. And so Nate was convicted and the Supreme Court eventually overturned that conviction and he was released.

Speaker 2 (05:10.84)
But in the meantime, Nate had been incarcerated at the Montana State Prison System and they had assigned him to this private prison near a small town in Missoula called Shelby, which is just south of the Albertan border by 20 miles. So in this private prison, Nate was assaulted by another inmate and was in a coma for over a month and then in the ICU in the hospital for another several months.

before he was released back to the private prison for about another six months before the Supreme Court eventually got to his case and overturned it. And so at that point he was released. So Mindy Driscoll, who by that time was out of law school and became an attorney, decided to take a civil case on Nate’s behalf for what she thought was going to be a false incarceration, but eventually turned out to be this case against Corps Civic for the assault that he suffered while he was incarcerated.

Unfortunately for Mindy, she developed long COVID and had some serious, both mental and physical issues associated with that. And she was unable to act as an attorney. She unfortunately missed a series of deadlines. And as a result, court civic move for summary judgment based upon the plaintiff’s attorney’s unresponsiveness. And at that point, Mindy actually called me up and said, I can’t do this case. I can’t be an attorney right now. Can you do it?

And I said, I’m happy to help. Let me know what’s going on. And so I picked up the case. And the first thing we had to deal with, of course, was the pending motion for summary judgment against Nate. And then what would come of it? So my argument to the court was the situation that Nate was in was due to no fault of his own. It was because of the health situation that his attorney was faced with. So the court eventually ruled that Nate could

Because you’re a really good guy.

Speaker 2 (07:08.312)
prosecute his case, but the sanction for all this was that Nate would not be able to pursue some punitive damages against CoreCivic. In a case like this, which was, I feel, a fairly significant sanction and one that we have asked the court to review several times and he’s…

Sure. Yeah. mean, you had the case for many years. This is the thing. You’re not like, you know, the case had been many years by the time you got in. And when he means unresponsive, like the discovery things had passed. I mean, there’d been a lot of things. And again, you had decided, you know, taking it on, even though they took away the punitive damages claim.

Right. And so then we began the case in earnest, started doing discovery and worked up the case to see how it all, how it all shake out.

What year was that? I feel like that would have been 2021. Is that a ton about right?

It was a long time ago. was like, there you know, was like, man, that was a long time ago. And so there’s ancient history.

Speaker 1 (08:10.51)
Well, the, know that, you we’re looking at the reviewing the case notes, you know, to get ready for the focus group that we did. Like it was very like, my gosh, you basically took this thing where it was, where it stood and began prosecuting it, even though years had already passed at this point. So many of the things that you needed were just gone. You know, I mean, some of the people who worked there weren’t there anymore. And some of the documentation just completely gone or.

Yeah, it just wasn’t there. luckily, because of the criminal case against the assaulter, the core civic had maintained the videos of the assault. And that’s one thing that your listeners should know is that the facts of this assault are actually quite simple, is that the assaulter buzzed himself out of his own pod, walked down the hall, buzzed himself into Nate Lake’s pod, walked up to his cell, beat him unconscious.

Walked downstairs, washed the blood off his hands and face, went back to the door, buzzed himself out, walked back to his own pod, buzzed himself in and yucked it up with his buddies. And that’s all on video. And that’s primarily because they were charging the assaulter with assault and criminally.

which is really good because we needed those videos to really put together the timeline of events. Cause Mr. Lake, he really had a terrible time recovering and you know, speech and a lot of really challenging difficulties from just recovering from the assault altogether.

Yes. So he has difficulty walking. He practices walking. has difficulty going upstairs, lifting his feet. Balance is an issue. He talks quite slowly. He has a cognitive delay. His memory is very spotty. He will sometimes remember things and then the next day will not remember that thing or even remember that he remembered it. So it’s very difficult. I should say the assault itself is not on camera.

Speaker 2 (10:16.11)
because the camera is not inside the cell. We can see the assaulter go into the cell and we can see him come out of the cell three minutes later. But we don’t know exactly what happened inside the cell other than that Nate suffered some serious brain damage as a result of it. whether he was being choked or just being punched, we don’t know.

Right, right. And that, you know, one of the things when it finally came down to trying the case and getting ready for it, you decided to do a focus group. Tell us about why you decided to do that.

You sure did. I should say that first, you came to the Montana Trial Lawyers Association Convention a couple of years ago and gave a special presentation for plaintiff’s attorneys just prior to our convention. And at that time, you went over the process that you use for focus groups, how you selected people, and your idea of what a focus group was designed to do for particular issues. Was this a focus group for mediation or a focus group for a trial?

or a focus group for developing voir dire. So there’s different, in a foci for different things that we’re looking for in a focus group. And in this case, we were looking for a focus group for trial. And you were able to gather a pretty diverse group of Montanans. mean, not just from anywheres, but Montanans from across Montana. So we could figure out after the focus group took place, what kind of juror we wanted.

you know, were we looking for a young male? We’re looking for an elderly female, that sort of thing. And that was really helpful to go through the process of presenting a streamlined opening that included some of the points that we were trying to make a trial and how they responded. It was a very effective tool in reshaping our opening and frankly, reshaping the way we presented the case, particularly on direct. So that was super helpful.

Speaker 2 (12:17.1)
And I should say too that you were super helpful in characterizing the feedback from the jurors to basically say, he said this and this is what he meant.

Well, that happens sometimes where they say something in the, doesn’t line up or it doesn’t match with what they wrote down. Cause we have, you know, we had them type things and we did the, we did a virtual, course. One of the things about your particular, where you’re trying the case is we’re not in state court. You had a large swath that was where people could have come from. And so it was like, okay, when you’re faced with a dilemma of virtual or in person, we knew if we try to do in person, there’s no way you’d get that good swath of everybody.

from all the counties you needed. So Virtual really helped us or helped me be able to gather you in people from as many counties as we could for that group to get that feedback and help you. yeah, they definitely will say something and then it doesn’t, you know, got to help translate sometimes.

Yeah, so I mean, just to help your listeners understand that we drew our jury pool from an area that was a thousand miles wide and about 200 miles north to south. So a thousand miles east to west and about 200 miles north to south. So a big area of land with not very many people.

Pretty rural too, yes, I to say. Definitely a diverse panel. We tried obviously not to seat it too young or too old or just to get a good variety for you. But you come in with so many different ways they had made violations. And so I felt like one of the things that was really helpful was, like you said, they told us what was most important. And then you and John were able then to come back in and refashion it and then also think through order of proof and like you said, direct.

Speaker 1 (13:56.299)
exam.

For a lot of our medical things, we streamlined it quite a bit instead of going into gory, gory detail, just to keep the focus on Nate and what had happened to him.

Gotcha, gotcha, awesome. Well, is there anything else that you felt like was beneficial from doing the focus group?

Well, practice, you you get to do a practice in front of people who are listening to you. And it’s always nice to, you you deliver an opening statement and then, you you don’t always get to have juries say, well, what about, you know, whereas in the focus group, you deliver your opening statement and they say, well, what about, and you get to anticipate what a real juror will want to know about.

And they had lots of good things to tell us. So, awesome. Well, tell me, I know you guys went to trial and tell me how long was the trial, how many days and how many days did you guys put on evidence?

Speaker 2 (14:49.954)
We put on evidence for two days and the defense put on evidence for a day. And then it was delivered to the jury on the morning of the fourth day with jury instructions and closing on the morning of the fourth day. And then the jury was out for about an hour and a half and they had a question. We came back for the question and the question had to deal with categories of damages. And then a half hour later they came back with their verdict.

gotta be a good feeling. Yeah. He’s, he’s the humble guy here. Okay folks, Tim, it was an amazing, you guys set some history here, right? mean, $28 million was pretty large, right?

Yeah, it’s a significant verdict. No question. So it’s 27.75, not 28. So as part of because it was a civil rights case, we could ask for attorney’s fees. And so we did that. And that pushed it over 28. And the bond that CoreCivic had to post in order to file an appeal is 28 million something.

Okay, okay, all right.

Speaker 1 (15:53.272)
So you guys are still on appeal right now.

Yeah, and of course, Civic has also filed a motion for a new trial over the alternative judgment notwithstanding the verdict. And that will be argued later in July. We’ll see how it all stands out.

And you’re not afraid of appeals. think you’ve probably done a few appeals. Am I right?

I have done many appeals.

Yes. So you’re handling the pillow.

Speaker 2 (16:17.9)
Yeah. Yeah. So we will, we’ll see what Corsiva comes up with their trial strategy. I think limits their ability to have success on appeal, but you never know.

You never know. You never know. That’s why we’re not going to talk too much about it. do. I do think though, you know, as far as there are simple things, of course, that anybody we can talk about and draw from. that is one that is a very, very fast trial today. It was fast.

Yeah, you know, the one thing about the federal courts in Montana are run really efficient trials. And so I think the practitioners have gotten used to getting to the point. And it’s certainly not uncommon for one of the judges to say, all right, we’re done with that one. What else you got?

I think most people talk about how, can you make this short and sweet and fast and simple because people just, attention spans are gone and people have no real patience for coming to the courthouse for weeks at a time or even a week people complain about. So that is pretty awesome. So does that mean you guys then did jury selection all in one day?

We did jury selection on Monday morning, picked the jury, the jury went out for lunch and we start offering evidence at one o’clock on Monday afternoon.

Speaker 1 (17:33.998)
Okay, then you guys roll right into it. Awesome. I know we can’t really talk too much about it, but is there anything else that you would want to share to our listeners? Some of the things you guys thought through or just, you know, the approach? I know you didn’t really have a choice here. There wasn’t a lot of offer on the table, right? As far as

That’s certainly true. So we had demanded $6 million as a starting point. And we went to a mediation with a private mediator. In this case, Cori Civic did not want to have a magistrate judge mediate the case. That’s fine. It’s their choice. And so we had a private mediator who basically said, they’re not going to offer a million dollars. So why don’t you just keep coming down to some amount and see how much you’ll put on the table. And they eventually put a half a million dollars on the table.

Nate was there with his stepfather and just like anything else, you weigh the odds of how things might turn out. And they decided they would rather take their chances going to trial. And so that’s what we did. You know, one important aspect of trial that isn’t always front and center is for a party to tell their story, make their story public and say, this is what happened to me. It’s not right. And we need to do something about it.

And even if they may lose that trial, you know, even if a jury decides not to give them very much money or any money, I think there’s an important cathartic experience for someone who’s been wronged to tell their story about what happened to

Yeah, I mean, there’s so much power in just being heard. think that sometimes we can get wrapped up in doing things for a case or wrapped up in case themes or whatever. But the point that you make is excellent that people, especially I know for you and a lot of your clients, like being heard, being witnessed, their story being witnessed means so much to them on a personal value level, right? Just being valued by somebody hearing your story means so much. And then like you said, empowering the jury to know

Speaker 1 (19:34.606)
this is what you’re doing here. There’s a lot of value of you being able to decide what is safe in your community and what is not. Sometimes it just feels like, there’s there for a car wreck and no big deal, but sometimes getting the bigger picture and especially in this particular case, right? You’ve got a private prison in a pretty remote area. That’s one the largest employers at this area.

and a prisoner, right? I I know that he was exonerated at the time, know, prisoner versus prisoner, you know, so there’s sometimes where it’s just like, well, what’s the community safety? You know, these guys are just in prison. So you all did an excellent job weaving that together at trial and having them be empowered to do something about what happened to Mr. Lake.

Yeah, and I would say, you know, my co-counsel, John Heaton, is he’s just really good at reading people and adjusting on the fly to reading the room and figuring out what’s the, you know, what’s the best way to respond to things. So really indebted to him and his people skills, really. I think it was a big part of how the trial turned out.

But you guys made a great team, right? You can’t have one without the other. You know, it’s like peanut butter and chocolate.

Yeah, so yeah, we’ve we did a trial earlier in February that would turned out well for us and I’m really happy that we had two good results so far this year.

Speaker 1 (20:58.85)
Was it a similar case that you guys did in February?

It was a case where Bureau of Indian Affairs police officer raped a Northern Cheyenne woman while on the Northern Cheyenne reservation. And the question was whether or not the rape was in the course and scope of his employment. And the case went on for eight years, went from district court to Ninth Circuit or the Montana Supreme Court, back to Ninth Circuit, back to district court, back to Ninth Circuit, back to the district court over the course of eight years. And we finally got it to trial.

in February of this year and returned a verdict for our plaintiff, this poor victim of rape. And just so know, the cop denied it categorically, but unfortunately she was impregnated and decided not to have an abortion. And the FBI did a genetic testing when the child was born and proven conclusively that the cop was the parent. It’s just a really tragic case, but…

Because he was an employee of the United States, the United States denied liability for eight years until we finally got to trial.

Wow, and that’s the case that you won the Montana Trial Lawyers Association Award for.

Speaker 2 (22:10.146)
That was originally for the Pellet Award because as I just said, we had to go through three lines of field and ultimately we were successful on that. We kept getting ruled against and then appealing and winning, appealing and winning, appealing and winning. So sometimes persistence pays off.

for sure and so you guys got a victory in February. Is that on appeal?

No, that is not on appeal.

that’s that. mean, that’s another win in and of itself. Congrats on that one. That is amazing as well. I’m sure there’s a link to that somewhere on the webs somewhere on the wide web. I’ll find a link and put that in the show notes because that work that you’ve done in that case is it’s amazing. And again, like you said, justice can take many, many years and sticking with it is half the battle.

That’s right.

Speaker 2 (22:57.09)
Yeah. And, you know, the Montana state legislature passed a new definition of consent based on that case saying that anyone who is being questioned by law enforcement cannot consent to a sexual encounter and anyone who is in a prison cannot consent to a sexual encounter with a guard. So basically we got the law changed in Montana statutorily about the meaning of consent. So there’s, there’s no way that

someone who has that power over another individual can argue that the individual consented to a sexual encounter.

Wow, that’s amazing, Tim. Congrats. That’s powerful. know, like make it long. Fantastic. that’s a really lovely note to end on. mean, how do you stick with it? Let me ask that question. How do you just keep sticking with it,

That’s what you gotta do.

You do what you gotta do. You do what you gotta do. And also I gotta tell you, you love what you do. mean, this is a deep, true, passionate love for correcting injustice and sticking with it no matter what.

Speaker 2 (24:09.378)
Yep. That’s what we do. That’s the idea. You know, it’s really tough. Taking Native American cases is really tough because justice for them is really hard to find. Taking cases for prisoners is really tough because justice for prisoners is really hard to find. Similarly, cases for people who suffer civil rights and dignities from law enforcement, it’s tough because justice is really hard to find for them. And so that’s what we’re trying to do. We’re trying to find justice.

Our system isn’t always fair, but we try to do what we can with it and to make it more fair for everyone.

Absolutely. All right. Well, Tim, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. I really appreciate you coming and talking about the lay case and then telling us about your other victory, which is super important and changing laws for consent. If anyone has questions or you want to reach out to Tim about his recent verdicts, either one, know he’s willing, environmental torts too. We’re going to have like all these links for Tim in our show notes. If you want to reach out to him, he is very generous and has a good ear if you have.

any questions, I know he’ll be happy to answer them.

Happy to help and big props for you. I mean, your focus group was awesome and your trial advice, quite frankly. I don’t know if that was just thrown in for free, but I’d sure appreciate it.

Speaker 1 (25:27.95)
I’m happy. Hey, look at me, I’m happy to help. I want to get that justice for your clients as well. And like I said, I mean, that’s my passion is helping you do your job as best as you can.

Super good. Well, your aid in this case was great. Really appreciate it.

Awesome. All right. Well, thank you all so much for listening to this episode. Like I said, we’ll have Tim’s contact information and tune in because we’re going to have John Heenan follow up this episode with his take on the trial and getting ready. So again, thank you so much for listening and until next time. Thank you.

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