BANGOR – A Brewer police officer has filed a reply to a controversial lawsuit that pits former gubernatorial candidate Pat LaMarche against him for alleged constitutional and civil rights violations following her arrest nearly three years ago on a drunken-driving charge.

In the reply to the civil suit, filed Feb. 6 at U.S. District Court in Bangor, Daniel Costain, through his attorney, denies the lawsuit’s allegations, including false arrest, use of excessive force and malicious persecution. The suit was filed in January in Cumberland County Superior Court in Portland, but has been transferred because of jurisdictional issues.

The lawsuit resulted from a March 1999 incident in which Costain arrested LaMarche and charged her with operating a motor vehicle while under the influence of intoxicating liquor after she allegedly failed to stop at a blinking red light at the end of the Joshua Chamberlain Bridge in Brewer.

Costain claimed LaMarche failed field sobriety tests and refused to take an Intoxilyzer test.

LaMarche claimed the arrest was politically motivated.

“If any of [Costain’s] acts are found to have been illegal and/or unconstitutional, [Costain] had no knowledge of such illegality or unconstitutionality at the time of the alleged conduct and at all times was acting in good faith,” the legal reply states.

In May 1999, a District Court judge effectively threw out the drunken driving charge. State prosecutors dismissed the charge shortly after the judge’s ruling. Later, the Maine Secretary of State’s Office ruled that Costain did not have probable cause to arrest LaMarche. Two years earlier, LaMarche had been cleared of a separate OUI charge.

Portland lawyer Tom Connolly filed the lawsuit on behalf of LaMarche. According to an office staff member, he was on vacation on Thursday and could not be reached for comment. Efforts to reach LaMarche were unsuccessful.

“I think Ms. LaMarche must have been very taken with her celebrity status,” said Portland lawyer Edward R. Benjamin, Costain’s attorney, responding to allegations that the arrest was politically motivated.

Benjamin noted that Costain was the same officer who stopped former Gov. Kenneth Curtis a few years ago without any clue as to who he was.

Benjamin said that to win, LaMarche must prove two things: that given the same circumstances, no reasonable police officer would have stopped her; and that no reasonable officer would have arrested her.

He said police officers have some “qualified immunity.” Costain’s reply to the lawsuit states such immunity protects him from these types of legal actions.

Benjamin expects the case to be scheduled for trial by sometime this summer.

NEWS reporter Dawn Gagnon contributed to this report.