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Wyoming Board of Outfitters and Professional Guides v. Clark8/27/2001
Appeal from the District Court of Lincoln County The Honorable John D. Troughton, Judge
[ ] Appellant, the Wyoming Board of Outfitters and Professional Guides (Board), challenges an order of the district court reversing the Board's decision to deny a guide's license to Appellee, D. Kenneth Clark (Clark). We will affirm the district court, but on grounds dissimilar to those relied upon by that court.
ISSUES
[ ] The Board offers this statement of the issues:
I. Did the district court err in ruling the Board had no statutory rule-making authority to deny a professional guide's license?
II. Did the district court err in ruling that the Board's decision to deny a license to Clark was arbitrary and capricious?
Clark abbreviates the issue thus:
A. Did the district court correctly rule that the Appellant's decision to deny Appellee a professional guide's license was arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, and contrary to law.
FACTS
[ ] Clark began working in the outfitting and guiding business in 1967. In 1995, Clark was charged with a Lacey Act violation for illegally tagging a deer that was shot by one of his clients who did not have a license to shoot a deer. Clark entered a plea of guilty to that violation in Federal court, and, as a result of a plea bargain, he was sentenced to two years' probation, a fine of $5,000.00, and revocation of his United Sates Forest Service (USFS) Special Use Permit and his commercial outfitting-guide operations on National Forest lands. In addition, Clark surrendered his outfitter's license to the Board. Clark was permitted to sell his hunting camp operation to Gary Amerine, with the condition that Clark would have nothing to do with operation of that business in accordance with the USFS conditions of Clark's sale of the business to Amerine.
[ ] On July 6, 1998, Clark was issued a conditional guide's license, which permitted Clark to guide only for Robert Barlow. An additional condition of that license was that Clark was to obtain prior approval from the Board before he could work for any outfitter other than Barlow. On August 1, 1998, Clark submitted a request to the Board to work as a guide for Amerine. Clark appeared at the Board's meeting on August 24, 1998, to pursue that request, as well as an apparent request to work for Gregg Fischer. However, the Board denied Clark's request to work for either Amerine or Fischer because of the USFS's limitation with respect to Amerine and the close proximity of Amerine's camp to that of Fischer's. According to the Board's brief, the purpose to be served by this limitation/condition was to avoid the appearance of impropriety by not allowing Clark back into the same location where his acts led to his conviction. Clark then amended his request to work for Dale Clark.
[ ] The Board asked Clark what the distance was between Amerine's area of operation and that of Dale Clark. Clark informed the Board that the two areas (or "camps") were approximately 28 miles apart. The minutes of the Board's meeting indicate that Clark represented to the Board that Dale Clark's camp was "about 28 miles away from Amerine's camp." On September 11, 1998, Mesia Nyman, District Ranger for the USFS in the Greys River Ranger District, sent a letter to the Board indicating that Clark's statement that Dale Clark's camp was 28 miles from Amerine's camp was misleading. Nyman stated in her letter that Dale Clark did not have a camp, that both Amerine and Dale Clark shared the same day-use area, and that the situation made it impossible to manage and monitor Clark's role as a guide (i.e., whether he was working for Amerine
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