NCJ - The lawsuit that never was - Dec. 11, 2003

The lawsuit that never was
http://www.northcoastjournal.com/121103/news1211.html#anchor516255
by KEITH EASTHOUSE
Dec. 11, 2003

Those who say Paul Gallegos's fraud lawsuit against the Pacific Lumber Co. shows that he is a rogue DA should consider this: His predecessor, Terry Farmer, almost filed a suit of his own against the company.

It was the late 1990s, a time when PL was employing a take-no-prisoners approach to logging -- and racking up scores of violations of state forest practice regulations in the process.

A call came to Paul Hagen, newly hired by Farmer to prosecute environmental cases. It was from the Fortuna office of the California Department of Forestry, then and now the chief regulator of private lands logging in the state. The agency wanted to know if the Humboldt County DA's office would be interested in pursuing legal action against PL for illegal logging.

Hagen, who had prosecuted similar cases against PL when he was with the Mendocino County DA's office, cases that had resulted in the company agreeing to pay financial damages, agreed to look into the matter. CDF forwarded information pertaining to no less than 225 violations.

Hagen went to Farmer, who told him to go to State Attorney General Bill Lockyer and ask his assistance. If such assistance was granted, if in other words the personal and material resources of Lockyer's office could be made available to the county in a legal action against PL, then Farmer said Hagen should proceed. If, however, such assistance was denied, Farmer instructed Hagen to forget it. No use provoking a lion without sufficient ammo.

Hagen, in a telephone interview this week, said he never got an answer out of Lockyer's people; or, rather, he said he was never able to get them to say "yes." He declined to speculate as to why, but you don't need to be a soothsayer to see that PL's influence with then-Gov. Gray Davis -- the company was a significant financial supporter -- might have had something to do with it. In any event, when Hagen told Farmer that they'd be on their own, his boss made clear that Hagen should move on to other things.

Hagen did so, and never carefully reviewed the evidence CDF had provided. As a result, he can't say today whether the case -- which promised the payment of, perhaps, hundreds of thousands of dollars to the county in financial damages -- would have been successful. Not surprisingly, given his achievements against PL in Mendocino, Hagen said he was ready to go without the help of the state AG's office if Farmer had been willing -- "although now I'm not sure that would have been wise."

That's an allusion to the magnitude of the "artillery," as Hagen put it, that the company and its supporters have directed against Gallegos over his suit. Gallegos, it's worth noting, also sought Lockyer's assistance and was also turned down -- not too startling since the Headwaters deal, signed onto by several state agencies, would have made the AG both prosecutor and defendant. That wouldn't have been the case when Hagen was nosing around.