The Tragic Real-Life Story Of Huey Lewis

Publish date: 2024-05-09

It's not exactly unknown for a famous musician to find himself in court. However, Huey Lewis has taken things a little bit further, as he actually ended up in a state's Supreme Court.

Lewis is an avid fisherman, and in an interview with White Fish Review, he discusses a peculiar, fishing-themed case that went all the way to the Montana Supreme Court in 2008. It started roughly two decades earlier, when the musician bought a property in Montana. A problem arose when a waterway that Lewis defined as a minor irrigation ditch was seen as a stream by the locals. Because Montana's Stream Access Laws allow anglers free access to pretty much any stretch of water that's large enough, the situation soon escalated into a situation where Lewis didn't want people to come fish in his ditch, but the people didn't want Lewis to prevent them from angling in his stream. 

"It became cause celeb [sic] to go after these 'rich guys,' and they painted this picture of us coming in, buying property with public water, and fencing the public off from the water," Lewis describes the situation. "Which was a lie."

The case ended up making its way higher and higher in the state's judicial system, and Lewis raked in "it's a ditch"-themed victories. After 20 years, however, it finally went to the Montana Supreme Court, which decided to open the ditch-turned-stream to the public.

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