$1.6 Million Judgment for Woman Assaulted by a BIA Officer Who Answered Her Call, Won After Ten Years
After trial: Final. A federal judge set damages at $1,600,000 in 2020 but declined to order the United States to pay; after the Montana Supreme Court held in August 2022 that the federal government could be responsible, Judge Molloy ordered the United States to pay after a February 4, 2025 bench trial.
In 2015 a woman on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation called authorities because she was worried someone might be drinking and driving. The Bureau of Indian Affairs officer who responded assaulted her. A federal judge fixed damages at $1.6 million in 2020, and after nearly a decade of litigation over whether the United States was responsible, ordered it to pay in 2025.
What happened
In 2015, a woman living at Lame Deer on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation called authorities because she was worried that someone else might be drinking and driving. The courts identify her only as L.B., and so do we.
A Bureau of Indian Affairs officer, Dana Bullcoming, responded in full uniform, with badge and gun. He threatened to arrest her for drinking on the dry reservation unless she had sex with him, and then assaulted her. She became pregnant and is raising the child. Bullcoming pleaded guilty to rape in 2017 and was sentenced to three years.
The civil case then took almost ten years, and not because of any doubt about what happened.
In 2020 a federal judge fixed her damages at $1,600,000 but stopped short of ordering the United States to pay, on the ground that the officer might not have been acting within the scope of his employment. The Ninth Circuit sent that question to the Montana Supreme Court, which held in August 2022 that the federal government could be responsible. After a one-day bench trial on February 4, 2025, Judge Donald Molloy ordered the United States to pay the $1,600,000.
Molloy's reasoning on scope of employment is the part with consequences beyond this case. Bullcoming arrived in uniform in response to her own call. He had the power to arrest her for the alcohol violation. He offered to forgo that arrest in exchange for sex. His tortious act, the judge wrote, was closely intermingled with his employment.
The cap analysis is worth stating because it cuts the opposite way from what people expect. Under the Federal Tort Claims Act the United States is liable in the same manner and to the same extent as a private individual in like circumstances. So Montana's $750,000 governmental cap does not reach the federal government. An identical assault by a Montana state or county officer would have been capped at $750,000. The Act also bars punitive damages outright.
She was represented by John Heenan of Heenan and Cook in Billings.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
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