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Giveaway House dispute resolved

New board formed, will continue 40-year charity

A Havre attorney said this morning he will be filing paperwork in state District Court listing the resolution of a months-long dispute over who had authority over a decades-old Havre charity.

Stephen Brown said the two sides in a lawsuit about Community Giveaway House agreed during a settlement conference Tuesday to appoint four members to a new board. The new members are to select a final board member and move forward with the charity, located in a North Havre residence given to the charity by one of its co-founders, Ruth Nystrom.

“We’re pretty pleased,” Brown said, adding that the board, comprising representatives of both sides of the lawsuit, is a “good group of people that care about the charitable nature of the organization.”

He said the new board members are Nystrom’s daughter Carol Forshee of Idaho, Kelly Ann Damson, Jim Howendobler and Jolene Ophus.

Brown said the settlement also includes a resolution of a separate lawsuit between Forshee’s daughter, Sheila Forshee, and Roberta Beute.

The previous board split at the end of January, with the former vice president, Sue Markley, spearheading the creation of a new board of directors in February.

Sheila Forshee, secretary and treasurer of the previous board, then spearheaded the creation of another new board in March.

In April, Markley’s board filed a lawsuit asking the court to determine it was the legal board of the nonprofit corporation, which Nystrom, co-founder Anne Friesen and others incorporated as a nonprofit charity in 1989.

Nystrom and her husband, Karl, at that time also deeded over the North Havre property where the charity operated the corporation.

This fall, Sheila Forshee’s board ran into a dispute of its own. After the board members removed Roberta Beute as president and director in September, Beute filed a lawsuit in Hill County Justice Court against Forshee, asking the court to award Beute more than $4,341.83 which Beute said she had spent on behalf of the board. Judge Audrey Barger ruled her court did not have jurisdiction on the lawsuit, and transferred it to District Court to be included in the April lawsuit.

Brown said this morning that the settlement agreed upon Tuesday includes Beute’s claims going before the new board so it can consider reimbursing her.

The new board members represent both sides of the dispute, he added. Damson was president of the board formed in March, and will serve with Carol Forshee and Jolene Ophus, one of the board members from 2012 who reconstituted the board in February including her continuing as a director, and Howendobler, who was appointed a member of that board by in February.

 

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