Forest Defenders: 

This sounds like a rerun of the suit originally brought by Humboldt County District Attorney Paul Gallegos which was never tried on its very strong merits.  Instead, the court ruled that Gallegos didn't have standing to sue, inspite of the fact that Hurwitz had inflicted major harm on the county and Gallegos was county DA. 

Perhaps we'll get a better judge this time. 

Hummingbird Lou: 
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=410620677



forwarded from:  http://groups.yahoo.com/group/earthfirstalert/

http://www.sfgate. com/cgi-bin/ article.cgi? f=/c/a/2009/ 03/18/BURB16GOHM .DTL&t
ype=printable

Ex-Pacific Lumber chief must face fraud trial
Bob Egelko, Chronicle Staff Writer
Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Financier Charles Hurwitz, who took over Pacific Lumber Co. in 1986 and
touched off a storm of protest with his tree-cutting practices, must go to
trial in a lawsuit filed by a former state forestry director accusing him of
defrauding the federal government into paying $250 million for the pristine
Headwaters Forest, a federal judge has ruled.

The case, scheduled for trial April 20 in Oakland, centers on the company's
sale in 1999 of the 3,000-acre Humboldt County forest, the nation's largest
privately owned old-growth redwood grove. In a deal brokered by Sen. Dianne
Feinstein, D-Calif., Pacific Lumber also promised to follow stringent
logging practices and preserve the habitat of endangered creatures on its
remaining 210,000 acres of timberland in Northern California.

The suit alleges that Hurwitz, in order to increase logging and pay off his
company's debts, presented a study, known as a sustained-yield plan, that
overstated the amount of timber his company could cut each year without
causing lasting damage. Pacific Lumber denied the allegations after the suit
was filed in 2006.

State forestry officials agreed to allow more logging on Pacific Lumber
property after the company submitted the sustained-yield plan and Hurwitz
threatened to back out of the deal unless the state raised the tree-cutting
limits it had initially proposed.

Despite the concession, which the federal government accepted, Pacific
Lumber was unable to pay its debts and filed for bankruptcy in January 2007.
Its new owners, founders of San Francisco's Gap Inc., have won support from
environmental groups for their plans for sustainable forestry and reduced
logging.

James Brosnahan, a lawyer for Hurwitz and his investment company, Maxxam
Inc., said Tuesday his clients are confident a jury will vindicate them.

"The federal government got the magisterial Headwaters property. They got
everything they wanted," Brosnahan said, noting that the government has kept
out of the suit. "That makes it a very strange federal fraud case."

U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken ruled, however, that jurors could decide
the government was defrauded into paying too much for the land, or into
entering an agreement that it otherwise would have rejected. She said the
plaintiffs had presented enough evidence to let a jury decide whether the
timber plan was fraudulent.

Plaintiffs in the current lawsuit are Richard Wilson, the state Department
of Forestry director who approved the plan in 1999, and Chris Maranto, a
state forester who detected the alleged fraud several years later. They are
suing under a whistle-blower law that would entitle them to 15 percent or
more of the damages awarded to the government. Hurwitz could be ordered to
pay damages equal to three times the government's losses.

E-mail Bob Egelko at begelko@sfchronicle .com.