About Sydney Best
Sydney E. Best is an Associate at Beck, Amsden & Stalpes. She grew up on a small ranch south of Great Falls and attended CMR High School before earning a B.A. in International Studies and Spanish, cum laude, from Willamette University. Sydney earned her J.D. with High Honors from the University of Montana School of Law in 2019, where she served as Articles Editor on the Montana Law Review and as a teaching assistant for Evidence. During law school she was a clinical student in U.S. Magistrate Judge Jeremiah Lynch's chambers and interned for Montana District Court Judge Amy Eddy on the Montana Asbestos Claims Court.
After graduating, Sydney clerked for two years for then-Chief U.S. District Court Judge for the District of Montana Dana L. Christensen. Since joining the Beck firm, she has worked on a wide variety of cases, including partnership disputes. She is a member of the Montana State Bar, admitted to the U.S. District Court for the District of Montana, and admitted before the Montana Supreme Court.
Proven verdicts and settlements at Beck Amsden & Stalpes
These results are credited to Beck Amsden & Stalpes. A result appears under an attorney's own name only when a published source names them as counsel on the case.
A Gallatin County jury awarded $15 million to Catharine Hudgens after her husband Lew died from carbon monoxide poisoning in their honeymoon cabin at Rainbow Ranch Lodge in Big Sky, Montana, returning what the plaintiff's firm described as more than double the county's previous largest verdict.
A Missoula County jury awarded $8.2 million, including $5.2 million in punitive damages, after Les Schwab sold a retread tire installed on the front steer axle of a cement truck that blew out on US-93 near Ronan, killing two women.
John Amsden served as co-lead counsel for hospital employees whose employers secretly accepted $26 million from Blue Cross Blue Shield of Montana in exchange for six years of exclusive coverage, inflating the workers' health-plan premiums.
A Gallatin County jury awarded the widow of Gerald Lutz $815,400 against National Crane Corporation after the 28-year-old groundman was electrocuted when an uninsulated crane cable touched a 7,200-volt power line in 1989. The Montana Supreme Court held the manufacturer's misuse and assumption-of-risk defenses should not have reached the jury. It ordered the jury's 20 percent fault share for Lutz removed and the full verdict reinstated, less a $110,000 settlement credit.
Beck, Amsden and Stalpes co-counseled 98 Opportunity, Montana landowners through 13 years of litigation against ARCO over arsenic deposited by Anaconda's copper smelter, ultimately settling the case in 2021 after it twice reached the Montana Supreme Court and once reached the U.S. Supreme Court.
Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Each case is unique and depends on its own facts.
