PROVO — Eagle Mountain may have to start saving its pennies after a judge ruled Thursday that the former mayor can continue with his lawsuit requesting reimbursement for his legal expenses.

Brian Brent Olsen filed a lawsuit against the city in February, arguing that it should pick up the $119,000 tab for the attorney fees he incurred while defending himself against charges in 4th District Court.

Olsen was charged in November 2006 with seven third-degree felonies of misusing public funds for allegedly receiving reimbursements for trips that he never took and meetings he never attended.

Thursday, Gerald Kinghorn, the attorney for Eagle Mountain, argued that Olsen's lawsuit should be dismissed, stating that according to state code, Olsen's request for reimbursement should have come 10 days after he was served with a summons in 2006 notifying him of the charges.

"If he had come to the city and said, 'Look, I've been charged, I want you to be prepared to reimburse me for my attorneys fees if I'm acquitted,' we would have had to undertake something," Kinghorn said. "At least (we would have) known what was coming down the road and (could) budget for it."

But because Olsen didn't, Kinghorn argued the court lost jurisdiction and Olsen should be barred from proceeding with the suit.

However, Olsen's attorney, David Eckersley, argued that his client couldn't have requested that he be reimbursed for costs he hadn't yet incurred, and that such interpretation of the statute was illogical.

Judge David Mortensen called the pertinent sections of the code "clumsily written" but sided with Eckersley.

He found that a government employee or officer who is charged while acting in the scope of their employment can file for reimbursement after charges have been filed and then quashed, dismissed or the individual acquitted — the operative word being "and," he said.

Kinghorn said the city will be reviewing its options at this point, and Eckersley said he expected discovery would take several months to complete.

Olsen was acquitted after a four-day trial in September. The jury found that he had been careless and made mistakes dealing with his reimbursements but didn't intentionally or recklessly try to take city money — a necessary element of a crime.

Olsen's attorney had argued that there was confusion about how reimbursements were to be requested, who should sign the sheets and how overpayments were handled.

When Olsen didn't attend meetings he said he was going to, he testified it was because of family emergencies. On several of those occasions Olsen had already submitted an expense report and collected a check.

Prosecutors argued Olsen was reckless by failing to look at the expense reports he was signing and that he knowingly took money for trips he knew he hadn't taken.

e-mail: sisraelsen@desnews.com