Owner Fined $500,000 for Destroying 300 Oaks

A Ventura County judge fined a Los Angeles man $500,000 and sentenced him to 210 days in jail Friday for the destruction of some 300 oaks on his property outside Ojai.

William Kaddis, 58, was sentenced after being found guilty in May of using bulldozers to illegally plow down the trees on his 43-acre hillside ranch. Neil Evans, Kaddis’ attorney, said he would appeal the ruling.

In an emotional statement before the court, Kaddis said that the county had violated his rights and insisted that he was a law-abiding man. The Egyptian American also claims to be the victim of an ethnic hate crime.

“I am an American citizen. I thought I had rights as a property owner,” Kaddis told the court. “I was sitting at the trial like a sitting duck, like a lamb at the slaughter.”

Kaddis was tried by Superior Court Judge Kevin J. McGee after opting to forgo a jury trial. On Friday, after a hearing that lasted more than three hours as both sides argued the value of a dead oak tree, McGee sentenced Kaddis to five months of probation in addition to the jail time and fine.

The judge said Kaddis had fabricated a threatening letter that he claimed had been left on his property, and that he refused to cooperate with environmental inspectors.

“I don’t know why you did all the things you did in this case,” McGee told Kaddis. “Frankly, you would fit the description for the neighbor from hell.”

Kaddis was convicted in May of 11 criminal charges, including five counts relating to a protected-tree ordinance, illegal alteration of a streambed and illegally keeping 62 dogs on the property.

He denies having cleared the trees and says all the dogs have now been removed from his property.

Although prosecutors had sought a fine of nearly $1 million, Deputy Dist. Atty. Karen Wold said she was pleased with the sentence, in what officials believe is the largest illegal tree-removal case in county history.

“It was entirely reasonable. Under the circumstances, I can’t complain,” Wold said. “It’s a lot of money and a lot of time.”

Kaddis has offered various theories for the trees’ removal from his property, including vandalism fueled by ethnic hatred and that the trees were already cleared from his property when he acquired it. He has sued the county for $10 million, claiming inspectors trespassed on his property when they visited it in 2001.

County workers first learned of the tree removal from Kaddis’ neighbors. When inspectors visited the property in 2001, they found nearly 20 acres cleared of trees, according to a Planning Commission report. They also found a man, who said he was working for Kaddis, operating a bulldozer to push downed trees and brush into piles.

Sheriff’s officials last year investigated an envelope that Kaddis turned over to them containing a typed letter threatening him and taking credit for dumping oak-tree debris and brush on his land. They found “no evidence of a credible threat,” according to county documents.

McGee said Friday that Kaddis plowed down the trees in October 2001 without a permit, even after being advised of a county ordinance that protected oak trees. He said Kaddis planned to build a house and plant an orchard with 340 avocado trees he had purchased the same month.

Michael Garver, a Los Angeles landscaper called by the defense at Friday’s hearing, disputed testimony from the trial on the number of trees that Kaddis had bulldozed. The debris had been piled into mounds 15 feet high and 50 feet long in ravines.

“I tried to walk the grounds and make a count myself,” Garver said during questioning. “It was impossible. Absolutely impossible.”

McGee agreed that it was difficult to put an accurate dollar amount on the damage done on the $615,000 parcel off Baldwin Road. The $500,000 restitution, to be paid to the Ojai Land Conservancy for the restoration and preservation of oak trees in Ojai, was a compromise from the nearly $1 million that prosecutors were seeking.

In his closing argument, Evans questioned the proposed seven-digit fine. “How can a property that’s privately owned have [plants] on it that are worth more than the property itself?”

After the hearing, Kaddis, a Los Angeles real estate agent, was expected to post $50,000 bail while his case is appealed.