One month after a $4 million jury verdict, attorneys in the Big City Coffee-Boise State University lawsuit have filed dueling motions in court.

Lawyers for the two sides are scheduled to be back in an Ada County courtroom Monday, arguing a pair of motions. And the protracted dispute seems certain to grind into its fifth year, with a second court hearing already scheduled for the first week of 2025.

The latest legal maneuvering leaves the Sept. 13 jury verdict on hold. After a three-week trial, Ada County jurors sided with Big City Coffee owner Sarah Jo Fendley, saying Boise State University administrators had pushed her off campus because of her vocal support of law enforcement and the Thin Blue Line movement. Jurors awarded Fendley $4 million in damages. Boise State administrators have denied Fendley’s First Amendment claim, saying Big City voluntarily closed its shop at the university library in October 2020.

Attorneys for the university administrators had vowed to appeal the jury verdict, so the latest filings are not a surprise.

Here’s a rundown:

What do the plaintiffs want?

More money. And a lot of it.

On Sept. 30, Fendley’s attorneys filed for close to $1.7 million in legal fees and costs.

Fendley’s lead attorney, Michael Roe of Boise, says he alone racked up $730,000 in fees.

The plaintiffs’ legal bills appear to far eclipse the defense’s costs. Last month, Boise State said it had paid about $1 million on Big City-related legal bills.

In his filing, Roe argues that he is owed the $1.7 million because he essentially prevailed in District Court, even though he asked for $10 million in his 2021 lawsuit.

“Plaintiffs obtained an excellent result in the form of a $4 million jury verdict.”

Roe also suggests his legal bills spiraled because the defense team “vigorously” fought the case at every turn.

Roe also says his legal team took on an undesirable case.

“(We) were proud to represent (the) plaintiffs. However, the reality is that significant negative attention was directed at plaintiffs and their counsel in the media and otherwise. … Certainly, many other lawyers would not be willing to take the case given its presumed political dimension.”

Roe’s filing cast a little bit of a spotlight on the politics of the case.

Larry Williams — a prominent Boise businessman and a frequent, big-dollar donor to conservative candidates — bankrolled Fendley’s case from 2021 through June 2023, Roe wrote. Williams put about $475,000 into the case, and Roe said Williams would be reimbursed from a settlement on legal fees.

What do the defendants want?

Ideally, the defendants want District Judge Cynthia Yee-Wallace to throw out the jury verdict, and rule in their favor.

If they don’t get that, the defendants want a new trial in District Court — and they still leave open the option of an Idaho Supreme Court appeal.

In a pair of Sept. 30 motions, Keely Duke makes a laundry list of arguments on behalf of the two defendants: Alicia Estey, Boise State’s chief financial and operating officer and vice president for finance and operations; and Leslie Webb, a former top administrator at Boise State. And her recurring argument is that the jurors got it wrong, when they returned a $4 million verdict after about three hours of deliberation.

“The jury was confused, swayed by passion and prejudice, and failed to follow the law,” Duke wrote in her motion for a new trial.

Duke pushes back against several pieces of the $4 million verdict.

• The plaintiffs offered “meager evidence of economic loss,” which didn’t justify a $1 million award for business losses. Fendley said she owed about $125,000 on a loan she secured to open the campus shop in 2020. An expert witness tried to calculate Fendley’s revenue losses from closing the shop, Duke said, but those forecasts bring her projected losses to about $700,000.
• Jurors awarded Webb to pay $1 million in punitive damages, Duke said, because they falsely believed Webb could rein in student activists who protested Big City’s campus presence. This award “would have a devastating impact on public employees of all kinds whose jobs regularly confront competing rights,” Duke wrote.

In urging Yee-Wallace to reject the verdict, Duke said there was no evidence that Boise State pushed Fendley off campus because of her pro-law enforcement position, and she said Estey and Webb did not terminate the contract.

“The evidence shows that Big City elected to leave campus as a result of Fendley’s unwillingness to stay in a place where students would be allowed to criticize her.”

What happens next?

Yee-Wallace has scheduled a hearing for Monday to discuss Duke’s motions to reject the jury verdict, or grant a new trial.

Another hearing will focus on three other defense motions: a motion to reject Roe’s $1.7 million request for costs and fees; a motion to put payment of the $4 million verdict on hold pending appeals and post-trial motions; and a defense motion to sanction Roe for “(failing) to regulate and manage his behavior and emotions” during depositions and pre-trial proceedings. That hearing is scheduled for Jan. 6.