State court: Rescue outfit keeps name

BOISE – Bonner County Sheriff Search and Rescue Inc. can continue using its name – even though it’s no longer affiliated with the Sheriff’s Department, the Idaho Supreme Court decided in a unanimous ruling.

The reason? Search and rescue volunteers have legal rights to the name, and no law said they couldn’t keep it when they split off, Justice Daniel Eismann wrote in the court’s unanimous opinion.

“In essence, Bonner County simply argues ‘There oughta be a law’ and asks us to create that law,” Eismann wrote. “Bonner County’s appropriate course of action was to seek legislation, not to file a lawsuit and ask the court to create an appropriate law.”

Idaho legislators passed a law in 2005 banning new corporations from picking names that “falsely state or imply government affiliation.” But that law was passed long after Bonner County sued the search and rescue group, and after it lost in district court.

In fact, that 2005 law stemmed from a different case. Chuck Goodenough, deputy secretary of state in charge of the commercial division, said it came because a private detective wanted to set himself up as the “Idaho Bureau of Investigations.”

“The Department of Law Enforcement had a problem with it, and I had a problem with it, and we jawboned the guy into changing his name, and then we got the statute changed,” Goodenough said. In light of that, he said, if the Bonner group were to form today with “sheriff” in its name and no affiliation with the Sheriff’s Department, “I’d probably look at that with a jaundiced eye.”

But the law wasn’t retroactive and therefore did not require existing corporations to change their names.

“I’m just flabbergasted,” said Lt. Doug Harris, the Bonner Sheriff’s Department watch commander on duty Monday. He said when he discussed the case with Sheriff Elaine Savage last week, he told her, “They’re going to have to say you can’t do that, it’s just obvious – but I guess it’s not.”

The search and rescue group was headquartered in the Sheriff’s Office when it incorporated. Now it’s a volunteer-run nonprofit that takes search and rescue calls, but not official ones from the Sheriff’s Office. The Sheriff’s Office formed its own search and rescue operation after the 2002 split.

Ron Korn, commander of the nonprofit group, couldn’t be reached for comment Monday, nor could his attorney, Susan Weeks.

In its ruling, the Supreme Court awarded attorney fees to the search and rescue group, saying the county “acted without a reasonable basis in law or fact” in bringing its appeal, since it could cite no Idaho law that applied.