Flathead District Court Judge Retires from Bench After 12 Years

In the 1970s when Flathead County District Court Judge Robert Allison first started working as an attorney in Kalispell, he was using a typewriter and made copies with onion skin and carbon paper. To document court hearings, a secretary either wrote in shorthand or a dictation machine was used to transcribe proceedings.

These days, the 75-year-old uses modern technology as a tool for documentation, and he now wears a robe in the Flathead County Justice Center where he has presided over everything from family disputes to homicides since taking the bench in 2013. After nearly 50 years of practicing law, Allison will serve his final day in early January.

“It’s been a lot of fun and a very interesting and pleasant way to work and to serve the community,” Allison said.

This June will mark the 50^th anniversary of Allison’s admission to the state bar after he graduated with a law degree from the University of Montana in 1975. After graduating, he returned to Kalispell where he practiced law as an attorney for the next 37 years.

Growing up in Kalispell, Allison’s family has deep roots in the Flathead Valley that began when his great grandparents homesteaded near the current intersection of Whitefish Stage Road and Rose Crossing in 1883 before moving to Martin City in the early 1900s.

After graduating from law school in Missoula, Allison returned home to Kalispell in the 1970s. While all of his immediate family has since left the area, including his siblings and children, Allison remained in the Flathead Valley where he has practiced law for nearly five decades.

Allison launched his career in 1975 and started a private practice and in the late 1990s he worked as the Chief Public Defender for Flathead County before the system transitioned into a state program in 2006. At this point, he continued his private practice, with civil cases dropping by 30% during the Great Recession in 2008.

“I wasn’t very busy, so I was able to take more time off and do things I enjoyed doing and during that time I thought, ‘what do I want to do different?’” Allison said.

When two district court judge seats opened up in 2012, Allison won the seat against Dan Wilson, who eventually took the bench in 2016.  

Even with decades of experience in court as an attorney, Allison remembers being surprised by the steep learning curve once he took on his new role.

“I’d done hundreds if not thousands of court hearings, so I kind of thought ‘Oh I can handle that,’ and then you walk in and put on the robe, and all of a sudden it’s way different and you sort of have to learn all over again when you’re looking at it from a different perspective,” Allison said. “The breadth of stuff that judges deal with is way more than most people would imagine — even what I imagined. You get here and you think you’ve seen it all and then every day something makes you go, ‘Oh, I’ve never seen that before.’”

Allison says the details of search warrants and investigative subpoenas continue to bring surprises to his desk along with a high volume of individuals who are self-represented, which he attributes to a rise in attorney costs.

“When I first started practicing, nobody came into district court without an attorney — nobody,” Allison said. “Now in family law, it’s probably 75%.”

While Allison hasn’t seen a dramatic rise in case volume since he became a judge in 2013, due in part to the addition of a fifth district court judge. But he has noticed that criminal cases have changed with time. Drug charges that began with marijuana in the 1970s and cocaine in the 1980s eventually progressed with the introduction of heroin, pills, methamphetamine and fentanyl. Violent crime has escalated, too.

“We used to only have a deliberate homicide maybe once a year — it was kind of an unusual thing — and it kind of goes through phases now,” Allison said. “It seemed like for a while there we were having one a month. So, it’s a lot more. And then I see a lot more assault with a weapon charges.”

A recent deliberate homicide case that Allison highlighted was State v. Hillious, which is currently in the process of a Montana Supreme Court appeal after a Flathead County jury convicted Bradley Jay Hillious for murdering his wife in 2020. Allison sentenced the defendant to 100 years in the Montana State Prison.

“That was a crazy case,” Allison said.

Notable civil cases that Allison presided over included his 2020 ruling over a ballot measure that protected land use along Egan Slough in the Creston area following a dispute over a water bottling project near Flathead Lake. That same year, he ruled that the private “bridge to nowhere” spanning the north shore of Flathead Lake was built without a valid permit and ordered its removal.

As Allison watched criminal cases and civil disputes evolve with time, he also witnessed the legal culture change with the age of technology. Starting in an era without remote work, the internet, email or even fax machines, Allison said lawyers historically spent more time together — dropping by each other’s offices or chatting on the phone. He also remembers there being only about 50 lawyers in the Flathead Valley in the 1970s in an almost entirely male-dominated field. In 1975, Allison said there wasn’t one female attorney in Flathead County.

“The legal practice has changed a lot in the last 50 years,” Allison said.

Following a storied career, Allison plans to take a six-month break to spend time with friends and family, but he says he’ll likely be back as a substitute judge during conflicts of interest or other court complications that require an outside judge to step in.

“It’s been a great experience,” Allison said. “I actually sort of have mixed feelings about leaving, but I felt like I reached an age where I should let somebody a little younger pick it up.”

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