Kalispell attorney back from the brink

Less than two years after a devastating boat crash on Flathead Lake claimed both his kidneys, Kalispell attorney Stephen J. Nardi is back in business.

"It's just been a slow improvement until this summer, when I started feeling I could do my best job," Nardi said.

Nardi, 58, retired from his legal practice in 1998, shortly after being diagnosed with kidney disease.

"If I couldn't do my best job, I didn't want to do it all," Nardi said. "For some guys, it's life and death."

Then, in September 2007, Nardi's boat ran aground about a quarter-mile south of Mary B Island between two rock ledges, plowing its way mostly out of the water.

"There wasn't a spot on me that wasn't black and blue," said Nardi, who suffered major internal injuries in the crash. "I would get this intense feeling of tiredness … then boom. Next thing I know I was waking up in the back of the boat, blood all over."

His cell phone, by chance, landed next to his leg and Nardi was able to call for help.

Doctors at Kalispell Regional Medical Center were forced to remove both kidneys to staunch the internal bleeding.

"There were things that just lined up to allow me to live," said Nardi, who called the crash the "beginning of the beginning."

Nardi went on dialysis and began the wait for a donor, eventually receiving a kidney from his stepsister in April 2008.

After surgical complications and a slow recovery, Nardi - who recently left the Montana Public Defenders Commission and has kept current on the law - said he is ready to again begin work.

"I'm not going to attack it like I was 25. One thing you learn when you almost die is that time is a precious thing," Nardi said.

"But if a case requires me to be working full-time, hard, that's what I'm going to do. I'm also going to take time when appropriate for my friends and family."

A specialist in criminal defense, Nardi said he has participated in more than 100 trials - winning substantially more often than losing. His first homicide case came when he was only months out of law school.

"I've got a lot of experience in the courtroom, and that's my first love," Nardi said.

Nardi has represented defendants in some of the Flathead Valley's highest profile cases - including Steve Howe, the former New York Yankees pitcher charged with attempted cocaine possession, and Irene Wyman, who was acquitted of the 1982 murder of her live-in boyfriend.

"One of the toughest cases I've ever had was the Wyman case," Nardi said Thursday.

Wyman, who claimed she shot her boyfriend in self-defense, was one of the first women in the country acquitted on the "battered woman syndrome" defense, which Nardi helped pioneer.

"Those were some of the most interesting and difficult cases for me," he said.

Details of the alleged physical and sexual abuse perpetrated against Wyman by her boyfriend caused two jurors to throw up during his opening statement, said Nardi, who won the case without a self-defense instruction to the jury from the judge.

Nardi started practicing law in Kalispell in 1977, soon after graduating from law school at the University of Montana.

"In those days it was kind of the Wild West here," Nardi said. "There were five of us who did part-time public defender work … so all of the sudden you're out of law school … and here's a case."

Four generations of Nardi's family have lived in Kalispell. His great-grandfather ran a dairy farm on Kalispell's west side and his grandparents operated a small grocery.

"When I got out of law school, there was no question where I was going to go," Nardi said.

In his youth, Nardi - a self-described thrill-seeker - raced both motorcycles and cars. He took up skydiving in 1969 and, over the course of 20 years, has made more than 400 dives in locations as diverse as Flathead Lake, the Caribbean and Central America.

"I'm going to do as much living as I can do for as long as I can. Even if I have to borrow money, that's what I'm going to do," Nardi said with a smile.

Reporter Nicholas Ledden can be reached at 758-4441 or by e-mail at nledden@dailyinterlake.com