SPARTANBURG - On a wall in his Greenville office, retired businessman Edward D. Sloan Jr. displays 14 checks from state and local governments reimbursing him for legal fees incurred in lawsuits.

The checks are the spoils of one of Sloan's greatest passions - using the courts to make sure governments do not overstep their authority. He said he puts them on the wall "like farmers used to nail skunks' hides to the barn door."

From his cluttered, five-room office in the basement of a small business strip, the 74-year-old Sloan, retired as president of Sloan Construction Co., runs a thriving personal-litigation enterprise from which he wanders into any legal territory that suits his sense of justice.

His latest fight is with Gov. Mark Sanford. Sloan says Sanford cannot under the state Constitution be both governor and hold a commission in the U.S. Air Force Reserve.

The case was argued before the state Supreme Court earlier this month, and no ruling has been made.

Another of Sloan's pending suits seeks to force Friends of the Hunley, the caretakers of the Confederate submarine H.L. Hunley, to disclose its financial dealings.

Still another suit, settled on appeal, accused the Greenville County School District of trying to exceed a debt limit imposed on it by state law when it created a nonprofit organization to sell bonds to finance a $763 million school construction program.

A majority of the 30 lawsuits Sloan estimates he has filed during the past six years accuse local government agencies, usually in Greenville County, of procuring construction projects without taking competitive bids as mandated by state procurement law and without securing the required bonds. He says about a third of those cases have been concluded, while others are on appeal or are pending.

Sloan does not attempt to profit from his lawsuits, typically seeking only reimbursement for his expenses.

"The law, in all of these matters that I litigate, is written in clear black letters," Sloan said. "I'm simply saying the government must obey the law. And if the law is bad, what better way to get it changed than to make sure it is enforced?"

Sloan said government over-regulation was not a problem when he joined the family's highway-building business in 1954, but the problems grew until he retired in 1984.

Some of Sloan's biggest fights have come with environmental regulators. Through the years, he resisted the state's attempt to shut down his company's asphalt plant, fought for the right to dredge sand from a river adjacent to his land, and embarked on a complex and extended fight with regulators over the question of contaminants in his quarry.

In 1992, Sloan and the state Department of Health and Environmental Control went at each other when the agency declared that it wanted to go onto his land to clean up after a mining company extracted granite from his quarry.

The state won, but Sloan appealed. Before a ruling could be issued, the two sides agreed to undergo mediation. Sloan said he refused to settle without being paid something. After a three-hour meeting, DHEC agreed to pay him $1,000.

Gary Poliakoff, a Spartanburg-based environmental attorney and longtime critic of Sloan's environmental record, says the man is a puzzle.

"I've seen records to indicate his involvement with several significantly contaminated sites," Poliakoff said. "He has a record of escaping DHEC enforcement."

But Poliakoff expressed "great admiration" for Sloan's history of bringing public interest lawsuits.

"His litigation over the years has resulted in several positive public interest rulings," Poliakoff said. "It's definitely in the public interest to obtain clarification of the law where public interest issues are involved."