Lumber Firm Taking Tree-Sitters to Court

While most activists have abandoned their treetop protests, Pacific Lumber Co. has continued its fight against the anti-logging campaign by seeking heavy civil penalties against protesters.

In the last two years, the company has sued more than 110 people for trespassing and interference with its “lawful business operations,” including an estimated 40 individuals from protests this spring in Freshwater, a community about six miles from here.

Four recent lawsuits ask for damages against individuals, in some cases in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

“Obviously, our end goal is to take all legal actions available to us to discourage people who are breaking the law on our property,” said Jim Branham, a Pacific Lumber spokesman.

Protesters, many facing criminal charges, say the civil lawsuits are an attempt to quash activism.

“They’re trying to intimidate people to stop any type of public participation,” said Jeny Card, a 28-year-old protester who spent nearly a year living in an ancient redwood before being arrested, and sued for $250,000, in March.

The practice of filing lawsuits to combat civil disobedience is not new. In the late 1980s, Pacific Lumber sued at least 17 people involved in protests over the Headwaters Forest. The cases were settled before trial.

Pacific Lumber’s recent spate of lawsuits stems from four protests on the company’s Humboldt County land. One case was thrown out for lack of evidence. Another case, filed in April 2001, is in settlement negotiations. The third, involving four people who allegedly used a vehicle to block doors to the company’s Scotia headquarters, is scheduled to go to trial next month. The fourth lawsuit was filed against activists in this spring’s Freshwater protest.

“The concept of a lawsuit is very scary to somebody who’s never been sued,” said Darryl Cherney, a longtime environmental activist who said he has been sued twice by Pacific Lumber.

Jeanette Jungers, 50, a special education teacher from Eureka, was sued by Pacific Lumber for $335,000. She said that for many of those targeted -- young people with little to lose -- the suits are simply a hassle. For her, she said, it’s a hardship.

“From my perspective, it means a great deal,” she said. “I have a home. I have children. I don’t want them to attach my wages. I don’t want to lose my home.”

Jungers never climbed the trees, but she did trespass on Pacific Lumber property to provide weekly meals to tree-sitters. And on one of the days the company hired climbers to remove protesters, Jungers chained herself to a nearby tree and was arrested.

The longtime Humboldt County resident said the suit has already cost her. She paid $250 to file an initial court document, and more court fees are likely.

Since the mid-1960s, logging companies have filed lawsuits against protesters who challenge industry practices, said University of Colorado law professor George W. Pring, who with Penelope Canan wrote the 1996 book “SLAPPs: Getting Sued for Speaking Out.”

“They are not filed to win a judgment. This lumber company does not need a dime from these people in order to balance [its] budget sheet,” he said.

Protesters have labeled such lawsuits SLAPPs -- or strategic lawsuits against public participation.

Pring said the lawsuits are “huge winners outside of the courtroom in terms of silencing people, muzzling protests -- which is why the lumber companies use them.”

For Pacific Lumber, the outcome of the criminal cases will influence the civil suits, company spokesman Branham said, referring in particular to the case of protester Card.

Card recently accepted a plea bargain for a $10 fine -- a punishment Branham called “very discouraging.” In other cases, protesters have been sentenced to 10 days in jail, and one activist was fined $500.

“It seems to me the implications of [Card’s] plea bargain are pretty significant,” Branham said, adding that the company is likely to pursue its civil suits more aggressively if criminal penalties amount to a slap on the wrist.

Russ Gans, Pacific Lumber’s Eureka attorney in the civil cases, said the lawsuits should be secondary to the criminal cases, which could potentially result in jail time, fines, probation, stay-away orders and restitution to the company.

“If all those avenues were being pursued on the public, criminal end,” Gans said, “these civil cases probably wouldn’t be necessary.”