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S_MT PASS-20 — Bounded PASS-07 public-enforcement procedure, attorney-fee, and crosslink corrections

Fresh access date: October 26, 2026, Pacific / October 26, 2026, UTC Scope: Only the five requested PASS-07 corrections. PASS-18 is not repeated or adopted. PASS-19 remains in its separate review queue and is not treated as accepted merely because it has been rendered.

All other PASS-07 findings, examples, claims, tables, source histories, and outstanding limitations remain unchanged.

Correction summary

I. Exact replacement for the affected CID portion of PASS-07 E5

Civil investigative demand and challenge procedure

The Department may serve a written investigative demand on a person believed to possess relevant information, documentary material, or physical evidence. The demand may require a written report, testimony, or production at a reasonable stated time and place. (mca.legmt.gov)

A person seeking to extend the return date or modify or set aside the demand must petition:

• At any time before the return date stated in the demand; or
• Within 20 days after the demand was served;
• Whichever period is shorter.

The petition must state good cause and must be filed in:

• The District Court of the county where the served person resides;
• The District Court of the county where the served person has a principal place of business; or
• The District Court of Lewis and Clark County. (mca.legmt.gov)

“Before the return date” is not the same as “by the return date.” On the statutory text, the return date itself is not included in that branch. No actual deadline is calculated here because the service date, return date, service method, court-access facts, and any governing order are absent.

Section 30-14-113(2) does not expressly say that filing the petition automatically suspends the demand, extends its return date, or stays enforcement. Any such effect would require an actual court order or controlling authority not established in this bounded pass.

Conditional CID workflow

II. Exact replacement for the affected Department-authority portion of PASS-07 E5

Department investigatory powers, natural-person protection, and qualified nondisclosure

To carry out Part 1, the Department may:

• Issue subpoenas to any person;
• Administer an oath or affirmation to any person;
• Conduct hearings in aid of an investigation or inquiry;
• Prescribe forms; and
• Adopt necessary rules having the force of law. (mca.legmt.gov)

Those powers may not be used to compel a natural person to furnish testimony or evidence that might tend to:

• Incriminate that person; or
• Subject that person to a penalty or forfeiture. (mca.legmt.gov)

This is an actor- and evidence-specific protection. It does not textually establish:

• A blanket privilege for a corporation, LLC, partnership, or other entity;
• A rule that every business record held by a natural-person custodian is protected;
• A complete act-of-production doctrine;
• Immunity from every subpoena;
• A substitute for any separately applicable constitutional, evidentiary, or attorney-client privilege.

Information obtained through these powers may not be made public or disclosed beyond what is necessary for law-enforcement purposes in the public interest. That is a qualified disclosure restriction—not a promise that the information can never be shared, used in a public enforcement filing, produced under court order, disclosed to another law-enforcement body, or addressed through a protective order. The statute does not comprehensively resolve public-records law, court sealing, interagency sharing, downstream evidentiary use, privilege logs, or remedial consequences for an improper disclosure. (mca.legmt.gov)

Conditional protection workflow

III. Exact replacement for the county-attorney portion of PASS-07 E5

County-attorney assistance, requested initiation, and reporting

Under Part 1, a county attorney has a duty to provide the Department the assistance that the Department requests in commencing and prosecuting Part 1 actions.

A county attorney may independently initiate the available procedures and prosecute a Part 1 action “in the same manner” as the Department only on request of:

• The Department; or
• Another county attorney.

If the county attorney prosecutes the action alone, the county attorney must:

1. Notify the Department of the nature of the action and the parties within 30 days after filing; and
2. Report to the Department within 30 days after final disposition. (mca.legmt.gov)

The request predicates must not be omitted. Section 30-14-121 does not say that every county attorney may initiate every Part 1 proceeding without a Department or county-attorney request.

Separate Part 21 route

Part 21 contains its own direct enforcement authorization. The Attorney General or the county attorney of a county where:

• The debt-settlement provider is doing business; or
• A debtor resides,

may bring an action for violating §§30-14-2102 or 30-14-2103. That authority does not textually depend on the §30-14-121 request mechanism. The court may grant an injunction, restitution, and reasonable attorney fees and investigation/litigation costs. (mca.legmt.gov)

Accordingly, the Part 1 request condition should not be imported mechanically into:

• Part 21 enforcement;
• Another statute containing its own county-attorney authorization; or
• A private §30-14-133 consumer action.

Conditional county-attorney workflow

IV. Exact replacement for the attorney-fee portion of PASS-07 G5/public-remedy analysis

A. Two distinct current fee provisions

Section 30-14-131(2)

Section 131 is titled “Restoration — court orders.” It authorizes restoration, receivership, license revocation, and other equitable orders. Subsection (2) provides that the court shall award reasonable attorney fees to the prevailing party for bringing a successful action under Part 1. Its text contains no $250 hourly cap and no $100,000-recovery exclusion. (mca.legmt.gov)

The clearest statutory fit is a successful Part 1 enforcement or restoration action invoking §131 relief. However, §131(2) does not expressly identify:

• Whether only the Department or a county attorney can recover;
• Whether a successful private §133 plaintiff may invoke it independently;
• Whether a prevailing public-enforcement defendant can recover;
• Whether “prevailing party for bringing a successful action” includes anyone other than the successful claimant;
• How it interacts with the more specific private-action fee provision in §133(3).

Those questions are not resolved by the statutory text alone.

Section 30-14-133(3)

Section 133 creates the individual private consumer action. For any action brought under §133, subsection (3) provides that the court may award the prevailing party reasonable attorney fees, subject to all of these express conditions:

• The award is discretionary;
• No attorney fees may be awarded if the consumer recovers actual damages of $100,000 or more;
• Fees are capped at $250 per hour; and
• A self-represented person may receive fees at the judge’s discretion. (mca.legmt.gov)

The 2025 amendment to §133 added and revised other language but retained subsection (3)’s discretionary private-action structure, $100,000 exclusion, and $250 hourly cap. Montana Legislative Archive+1

B. Controlling private-action treatment

Montana private-action decisions apply §133(3):

• Tripp v. Jeld-Wen treated private MCPA fees as discretionary under §133(3) and held that a prevailing defendant receives fees only if the consumer action was frivolous, unreasonable, or without foundation. The relevant discussion begins at printed page 12/PDF index 11 and continues through printed page 15/PDF index 14. Justia Law+1
• B Bar J Ranch v. Carlisle again applied §133(3) to a private MCPA action and the Tripp standard, at printed pages 7–9/PDF indices 6–8. Justia Law+1

No controlling Montana appellate decision located in this bounded search holds that §131(2) overrides §133(3), eliminates its $250 cap, eliminates its $100,000 bar, or converts private §133 attorney fees into a mandatory award.

C. Correct bounded relationship

The affected PASS-07 fee treatment should read:

A successful Part 1 action may implicate §30-14-131(2)’s mandatory reasonable-fee language, particularly when the action proceeds through the public restoration or equitable-remedy route. A private consumer action brought under §30-14-133 remains governed by §133(3)’s specific discretionary fee provision, including its hourly cap and actual-damages exclusion, unless controlling authority establishes a different interaction. Sections 131 and 133 must not be merged into a universal mandatory-private-fee rule.

If public and private actions concerning the same conduct coexist:

• The public action’s §131 fees;
• The private action’s §133 fees;
• Public restoration;
• Private damages;
• Costs; and
• Any separate Part 20 or Part 21 fee authority

must be analyzed by actor, action, statutory basis, recovery, and actual order. This pass does not resolve fee allocation, duplication, common-fund treatment, double recovery, or accounting between separate proceedings.

D. Part 21 remains separate

Section 30-14-2104 permits the court in a public Part 21 action to award reasonable attorney fees and the costs of investigating and litigating the violations. That provision is neither §131(2) nor §133(3), and its public-enforcement fee authorization should be cited directly rather than inferred from Part 1. (mca.legmt.gov)

Fee-route matrix

V. Exact claim-crosslink replacements

These are citation and claim-reference corrections only. They do not change the substantive examples beyond the described link.

Complete bounded criminal crosslink

The criminal branch requires a fraudulent course of conduct declared unlawful by §30-14-103 and a conviction. Section 30-14-142(3) then authorizes a fine up to $5,000, imprisonment up to one year, or both. It is not a criminal classification for every Part 1 violation. (mca.legmt.gov)

If the offense is treated as a misdemeanor, the general criminal provision ordinarily requires commencement within one year after commission, unless another law provides otherwise. A continuing-course offense is committed when the course ends; time begins the next day. A prosecution begins when an indictment is found or an information or complaint is filed. (mca.legmt.gov)

VI. Affected PASS-07 claim-cell replacements

VII. PASS-20 source register

Failed or not relied on

• A direct public fetch of the complete 2005 session-laws volume containing Chapter 280 timed out. The historical volume was not used to establish any operative PASS-20 conclusion.
• No complete paid citator, trial-court order series, county-attorney file, Department CID, private response, fee petition, or public-records adjudication was reviewed.
• No controlling Montana appellate decision squarely resolving the §131(2)/§133(3) overlap was located in the bounded search.

VIII. Coverage table

IX. Self-check and preserved holds

Freshly read

• Complete current §§30-14-113, 114, 121, 131, 133, and 2104.
• Complete current §2-4-702 provisions material to the MAPA crosslink.
• Complete current §30-14-142 and relevant §45-1-205 timing clauses.
• The enacted 2025 §133 amendment pages.
• The relevant full-opinion portions of Tripp and B Bar J Ranch.

Preserved without re-adoption

• PASS-19 remains a separately queued, unreviewed correction.
• No PASS-18 judgment findings were used.
• C028 remains supported; it is not declared erroneous.
• P7’s broader restoration, receivership, injunction, limitation, provider-remedy, criminal, federal, and actual-provider holds remain.
• No old claim ID was invented for the criminal-route replacement.
• The supplied coordinator packet references were not accessed or represented as fresh research.

Still unresolved

• Whether filing a CID petition stays the demand.
• Complete constitutional and evidentiary privilege treatment.
• Public-records and court-disclosure interaction with §114.
• Exact eligible fee recipient and prevailing-party meaning under §131(2).
• A controlling resolution of §131(2) versus §133(3) in a private action.
• Fee overlap among public restoration, private damages, Part 20, and Part 21 proceedings.
• Actual county-attorney requests, notices, fee awards, criminal charging decisions, and agency records.
• Complete post-2025 amendment and paid-citator review.

No local write, filing, service, demand response, provider lookup, contact, record request, private-case access, independent-review conclusion, component acceptance, Montana acceptance, parent-dossier acceptance, A066 acceptance, operational approval, or publication-readiness determination occurred.

END S_MT PASS-20.