No Probable Cause, wrongfully charged

[Work4theman2]

What is the name of your state?What is the name of your state? Montana

Three months ago, my Wife was charged with theft of services. To
our complete surprise, she received a ticket by mail, with an order to
appear in court. I had stopped payment on a check she had written
to an auto repair shop for what I felt was very good reason.

Why did I stop payment? To be brief as possible, the main reasons
were the repair shop did repairs on my vehicle that I did not
authorize, he lied to me about sugar being in the fuel tank, so he
wouldn't have to cover the warranty on the new pump he incorrectly
installed just 3 months previous. Upon hearing the sugar in the tank
story I contacted the Sheriffs department to investigate tampering
with my vehicle. So any damages might be covered under my
insurance.

When the police went to the repair shop all evidence was gone. No
sugar in the fuel tank. Wouldn't a person with sound judgement,
after making those charges preserve the evidence in the fuel tank,
not in this case. When the police showed up, everything had been
cleaned up. The guy is a rip off artist.

The next day, having my doubts, I called to see if the vehicle was
ready to go, he read off the repair order to me which didn't include a
new filter that runs from the tank to the motor, but a bunch of work
that it didn't need and that I didn't request. I asked if him if he put in
a new filter, there was an awkward pause, then he asked one of his
mechanics in the background "did you install a new filter"? To my
surprise I heard "NO". Now wouldn't a reasonable person think and
expect an experienced mechanic would automatically put on a new
filter, (the only filter between the fuel tank and the engine) if there
was a bunch of sugar in the fuel tank??

After that, I called the sheriffs deputy to let him know what was
going on and that I felt they were being untruthful about the sugar in
the tank so they didn't have to cover the warranty. (see, if they could
blame it on someone else tampering, they wouldn't have to be
responsible for there mistake). The deputy then told my that the
mechanic in question was very reputable and wouldn't do anything
like that. I don't know if it was because I was from the next county
over or that the deputy and mechanic were good friends but the
deputy instantly sided with the mechanic. One of the other lies was
that he had to install a new distributor cap because it had a hole in it.
When we got the vehicle back he made the mistake of leaving the
replaced cap in the vehicle. Upon inspection it didn't have a hole or
any other problem. I took it to another mechanic for his opinion, he
said that it was perfectly fine and didn't need replacing.

I have never stopped payment on a check before this and I've been
doing business for a long time. I felt I was perfectly within my right
as a dissatisfied consumer to do this. I guess I was proved wrong
when the ticket showed up in the mail. Instead of the ticket being
issued to me, it was as I mentioned to my wife, even though I signed
the stop pay order. Anyway, we retained an attorney who said the
charges were bogus and it was a civil matter and he couldn't believe
the county attorney would sign off on something like this. 2 days
before Christmas we received copies of a request for dismissal from
the county attorney and a copy of the dismissal order from justice
court, in the motion for dismissal the assistant county attorney states
that the State cannot meet its burden of proof and the Judge’s written
statement was as follows, “Upon consideration of the Motion of the
Deputy Hill County Attorney, and good cause appearing,
It is Hereby Ordered that the charge of theft of Labor or Services in
the above matter is dismissed.

This would be all fine and dandy, but we are out $500.00 for a
defense attorney fees. My attorney said that the prosecution
wouldn’t send him discovery, I’ve requested the officer’s or
complainant’s report but they won’t release it to me either. Where is the
“Probable Cause”?? We don't even know what the charge was based on??

Even though our attorney said we had nothing to
worry about, we have worried for the last 3 months. In addition to the
attorney fees, we lost time away from work to appear in court along
with travel expenses, as we live nearly 70 miles away. It's humiliating to have to go appear before a Judge and enter a plea. In addition, the malicious way they charged my wife who had nothing to do with it, put extra stress on the whole family. Seems like they were so anxious to charge her they didn't have time to look at the facts. We have lost confidence in our legal system.

The repair shop hasn’t filed any civil suit to recover the repair bill, which I would welcome, to be able to get the facts out. The owner of the repair shop has so many lies going, I can understand why he doesn't want to persuit it.
Another thing both my wife and I have a clean record and have done business in the area for about 12 years.

Has a tort been committed against my wife?? Any advise or
comments would be appreciated to help get to the bottom of this.

[CdwJava]

Who do you think there might be a tort against? Probable cause is for an arrest, a summons to appear in court is not the same as an arrest, so there is likely no action against the sheriff or the DA. If you can prove that the original allegations were knowingly false, you MIGHT have a claim against the garage. But that's probably a small claims court action.

- Carl