MADISON, WI (WTAQ) – A federal court jury in Madison has awarded $2,500 in damages to a deer hunter who claimed that a DNR warden arrested him for no legitimate reason.
The arrest stemmed from an altercation between warden Bradley Biser and hunter Mitch Rooni in 2005, when Rooni and a friend registered 3 deer at a gas station at Brule in far northwest Wisconsin.
According to court documents, the warden asked Rooni how many deer he took — and when Rooni didn’t answer, Biser loudly said that the hunter didn’t like the DNR. Rooni denied it, and said it was people like Biser that he didn’t like. The two got into a fight.
The hunter was hauled off to jail, and a disorderly conduct charge against him was later dismissed.
Rooni later filed a federal lawsuit claiming that his civil rights were violated. A judge threw it out — but the federal appeals court in Chicago reinstated it, saying that “deer hunting is serious business” in Wisconsin.
That resulted in Rooni’s recent trial, in which jurors agreed that the warden lacked probable cause for an arrest and acted with “willful or reckless disregard” for the hunter’s rights.
(Story courtesy of Wheeler News Service)