Claims dismissed in decades-long dispute

U.S. District Judge Troy Nunley likely ended an 18-year legal battle between a rancher and Butte County.

The county filed criminal charges against rancher Irvine Leen in 2003, claiming he did work on an irrigation ditch without proper permits. He was acquitted in 2011 of all charges then launched his own civil suit against regulators investigating his property in Oroville, alleging harassment and misconduct within the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.

Nunley dismissed the claim in 2015 on the grounds Leen missed the statute of limitations, but Leen revived the case in an appeal. A 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals' three-judge panel vacated the judgment and remanded the case back to Nunley, instructing him to reevaluate Leen's due process and equal protection claims.

"Plaintiffs' due process arguments lack clarity, largely because plaintiffs continually refer to alleged harms that occurred outside the statute of limitations period," Nunley wrote in the ruling Tuesday.

Nunley's ruling also dismissed Leen's equal protections claim, stating those allegations do not support that the defendants' conduct lacked a rational basis, much less that they acted with "blatant animus."

Nunley also dismissed Leen's substantive due process claim, granting the defendants' motion to dismiss.

-- Morgan Keith