Suit Deemed ‘Most Frivolous Ever’
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ROUNDUP, Mont. — Rodney Skurdal, kingpin of the Freemen in Montana, may have begun his activity with the fringe group in Wyoming.
Skurdal spent nine years in the Marine Corps immediately after high school in Montana and served at stations in California, Michigan and Kansas. He was discharged in 1980 and in 1984 turned up in Gilette, Wyo., in a conflict over a workman’s compensation suit.
Records show that he claimed the federal government lacked authority to print paper money; he demanded 32 times the amount paid him for his “damaged personal property.”
The trial court dismissed the claim and Skurdal, representing himself, appealed. That stretched the case along for a year.
The state Supreme Court began its lengthy denial of the claim with the words: “In perhaps the most frivolous appeal ever filed here . . . “
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