EarthJustice Client - Humboldt Watershed Council

Ahh, the activist web - the plot does thicken...
Cases
California Logging Clean Water Exemption

In Brief: The Clean Water Act is meant to clean up the nation's waterways. In some areas, however, exemptions have been issued that have hampered the goal. One such is in California, where three water boards have ruled that loggers are exempt. Earthjustice is challenging the exemptions in court.

Staff:
Clients:
Environmental Protection Information Center
Humboldt Watershed Council
Updated: April 20, 2004
Case #11095

1996 - Debt for nature

No bias here. Right. And of course, Hurwitz prevailed. The judge ruled that these guys used Mafia-like tactics to try to steal his land.

The Junk Bond Boss Meets the Ancient Sequoia
by Sharon Seidenstein

Ancient redwoods are priceless, from an environmentalist's point of view, but now green activists are trying to attach a price tag to the trees in order to preserve them. Texas millionaire Charles Hurwitz controls one of the last groves of old-growth redwoods in private hands, and environmentalists are lobbying for a ìdebt-for-natureî swap, with Hurwitz giving the trees to the U.S. government to pay back some of the $1.6 billion it spent bailing out a savings and loan Hurwitz managed into bankruptcy. Hurwitz says the government should either buy the land at fair market value, or get out of his way and let him log.

The direct action group Earth First! was the first to suggest that the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) accept the redwoods of Pacific Lumber Company's Headwaters Forest in Northern California as payment for its 1988 bailout of depositors of Hurwitz's United Savings & Loan of Texas. In its usual fashion, Earth First! made the suggestion politely, at a 1993 demonstration at the FDIC's Washington, D.C. headquarters. A lot is at stake. The forest's Headwaters Grove is home to 1000-year-old redwoods standing hundreds of feet tall and shielding the habitats of the Northern spotted owl and other threatened and endangered species. It is a remnant of a forest that once blanketed the West Coast from Big Sur to southern Oregon, 96% of which has vanished under 150 years of liquidation logging.

Since the 1993 demonstration, Greenpeace, Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund, and Senators and Congresspeople have joined in the call for a ìdebt-for-natureî swap. They are appealing to the FDIC, the Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS) and the Clinton Administration to negotiate forgiveness of all or part of Hurwitz's debt to the federal government in exchange for 57,000 to 76,000 acres of Headwaters Forest, to be placed into public hands for long-term protection.

Debt-for-nature swaps, although rare in the United States, are not unheard of. In 1988, the Bank of America gave the state of California a nature preserve in the northern part of the state, three other properties and $27 million to clear a debt of about $54 million. In the early 1990s, Howard Hughes' estate swapped wetlands near the Los Angeles Airport in exchange for state taxes due. Outside the United States, Third World countries have traded ecologically valuable resources to relieve debt. This controversial version of the swap has helped protect tropical forests and grasslands in Bolivia, parks on the island of Palawan in the Philippines and a dozen other sites.

A swap of S&L debt for nature seems like a far-fetched plan if you ask Richard Keeton, Hurwitz's lawyer. He took time out from his busy schedule, fielding lawsuits from people seeking his client's cash, to tell me in a good-natured way that any debt-for-nature idea is ìbeating a dead horse.î Since his client is innocent of wrongdoing, he explained, there is no debt.

But it could be one of the FDIC's options, because of the convoluted and seemingly illegal connections Hurwitz created between his S&L and the go-go world of junk bond financing of the 1980s. Hurwitz bought the redwoods with his own swap ó the FDIC claims he buried his Texas S&L by having it buy junk bonds nobody wanted from Michael Milken's junk bond factory at Drexel, Burnham, Lambert in New York City. In turn, Milken helped Hurwitz engineer the takeover of Pacific Lumber and received his business issuing the junk bonds to pay for it.

The takeover has led to the equivalent of a work speedup in the forests. Because junk bonds are risky, or backed by assets of lower value, they burden the companies that issue them with high interest payments. To pay off the loans and interest on $600 million of junk bonds (and $300 million of bank loans) issued to pay for the company, Hurwitz has doubled Pacific Lumber's traditional rate of logging, sold off assets and allegedly raided the employee pension fund. Before the takeover, Pacific Lumber's relatively conservative harvesting practices had kept the forests healthy while other timber companies had destroyed theirs. But now the only thing that protects the Headwaters Grove from logging is an injunction won by an environmental group ó which is likely to end in September.


Junk Bonds for Sale Cheap

Last year, The Wall Street Journal described Hurwitz's United Savings and Loan of Texas as ìa highflying thrift heavily involved in junk bonds, arbitrage and speculative real estate plays.î Its failure was one of the most costly of the S&L bailouts of the 1980s, and centrally involved in the junk bond crisis that cost the U.S. government $134 billion to clean up.

The S&L's complicated financial transactions with Hurwitz's Maxxam Corporation essentially freed up its federally insured deposits to fund Maxxam's hostile takeover of Pacific Lumber. In effect, the government argued in a 1991 lawsuit against Michael Milken, Hurwitz transferred the assets of the federally-insured S&L to Maxxam (see box). This suggests that Hurwitz and Maxxam Corporation acquired Pacific Lumber and Headwaters Forest illegally, and the takeover of the lumber company ìled to the failure of the savings and loan and subsequent bailout,î as one environmental lawyer put it.

The Hurwitz camp categorically denies any wrongdoing. For one, they claim Hurwitz did not legally control United Savings & Loan. His lawyer also says that the FDIC cannot legally ìsecond guessî today actions taken according to Hurwitz's best business judgment in the 1980s.


If the Suit Fits. . . File It

Charles Hurwitz is a wealthy man. He is principal shareholder and CEO of Maxxam, Inc., whose assets were recently estimated at $3.8 billion. Hurwitz, or Maxxam, own Kaiser Aluminum, Federated Development Company of New York, Pacific Lumber and United Financial Group, the former holding company of United Savings and Loan of Texas. Pacific Lumber owns 189,000 acres in Northern California plus two mills. The acreage includes nearly all old-growth redwoods in private hands, some 6,000 acres. Prime old-growth redwood trees, like many of the 300-foot giants in Headwaters Grove, are worth $100,000 each at the lumber yard.

But apparently Hurwitz owes a lot of people a lot of money ó and many are finally going after it. He has faced three shareholder suits linked to Pacific Lumber alone: one an attempt to block the takeover of Pacific Lumber, the second by Pacific Lumber's original shareholders who felt they had been sold out for a ludicrous price, and a third challenging his raid of the employee pension fund. In 1995, the FDIC, the Office of Thrift Supervision and a Humboldt County community activist filed three new suits against him.

FDIC v. Hurwitz, filed in August 1995, seeks a $250 million damage award from the financier directly; Maxxam is not named in the suit. It accuses Hurwitz of having United Savings & Loan buy junk bonds from Drexel in exchange for the firm financing his takeovers. He then hid the true condition of the S&L ìby a pattern of deceptive financial reporting and balance sheet manipulation.î As it sunk deeper into a hole, the S&L increased its liabilities beyond legal limits, gambled on ìcumbersome real estate projects with no realistic chance of success and invested in complex financial instruments which the officers understood poorly and which resulted in staggering losses to the association.î


The FDIC suit

Under Hurwitz's control, the financial condition of United Savings steadily deteriorated. As the institution's financial health plummeted, Hurwitz, senior officers and United Savings board members serving at Hurwitz's request undertook greater and greater risks until both the officers and board members ìbecame entirely indifferent to losses the institution might incur,î the FDIC charged in its lawsuit against Hurwitz.

But according to FDIC chair Ricki Tigert-Helfer, the lawsuit cannot compel Maxxam, Pacific Lumber or their boards of directors to consider a debt-for-nature swap since they might decide to use other assets to satisfy their liability.

"Nevertheless," she added in a letter to Jill Ratner, a lawyer with the Rose Foundation for Communities and the Environment, "the FDIC is open to any appropriate settlement of its claim, including a debt-for-nature swap."

Additional pressure for a debt-for-nature swap came from yet another lawsuit, filed in January 1995 by Humboldt activist Robert Martel in U.S. District Court. It asks that Maxxam repay losses related to the Savings & Loan and that the judge award as much as $4.8 billion in damages on behalf of U.S. taxpayers.

Nearly a year later, in December 1995, the federal Office of Thrift Supervision filed 13 claims in administrative court charging Hurwitz, Maxxam, Federated Development and former and present directors of United Savings and Loan and its holding company with contributing to the failure of the S&L by turning it into ìa vehicle for speculative, highly leveraged, high risk investmentsî from a traditional home mortgage lender. In order to keep financing takeovers while maintaining its stated net worth, the thrift had to sell off its assets.

The suit seeks civil penalties of more than $800,000, restitution and a ban on the financiers from working in the banking industry. Among its other claims: that the financiers failed to properly maintain the minimum net worth of the S&L, which regulators had made a condition for approving the merger of United Savings & Loan and another thrift in 1983; violated a ban against affiliated parties engaging in transactions when the S&L bought junk bonds from Drexel, Burnham, Lambert; failed to maintain the minimum capital required by law; and paid out ìunsafe and unsoundî bonuses, settlements and severance packages to officers and directors.


Languishing and Dying in Congress

The U.S. Congress and the Clinton Administration are well aware of Headwaters and Hurwitz. In 1994, then-Representative Dan Hamburg (D-CA) introduced a bill in the House that authorized the U.S. Forest Service to begin negotiating with Pacific Lumber and other landowners of Headwaters to attach the forest to the Six Rivers National Forest. Although the bill eventually passed the House, the Senate version introduced by Barbara Boxer (D-CA) did not come up for a vote.

Hurwitz has a close ally in Frank Riggs (R-CA), the Congressman who defeated Hamburg in the Republican sweep of 1994. In June, Riggs was soundly rebuffed by his colleagues when he tried to win passage of a rider limiting enforcement of the Endangered Species Act on Pacific Lumber land. Perhaps Pacific Lumber was tired of being challenged by a local environmental group for its violations of environmental law. The Environmental Protection Information Center won nine suits that overturned Headwaters timber harvest plans.

The House also defeated a bill Riggs introduced that would have opened Headwaters to logging if negotiations between the Forest Service and the landowners fell through within an 18-month period.

Meanwhile, environmentalists, senators, representatives, Vice President Al Gore and high-level administrators in the departments of the Treasury and the Interior have been busy exchanging letters and holding meetings. One of the most hopeful meetings took place in February in Sacramento with Deputy Interior Secretary John Garamendi, California state officials and Hurwitz.


Searching for Cover

It's now June.

Pacific Lumber is busy logging. They have already cut a large swath through Headwaters Grove and logged significant portions of second-growth and residual-growth forest. Suits filed by the Environmental Protection Information Center have largely kept the chainsaws out of the most pristine groves, but the court injunction that currently protects the Headwaters Grove will probably be lifted in time for autumn logging.

The neighboring Elk River Timber has indicated it is willing to sell its land to public trust, but in the meanwhile is logging in a threatened species' habitat.

The Environmental Protection Information Center continues its legal battles, challenging a timber harvest plan along the South Fork Elk River drainage in a June lawsuit.

The FDIC suit against Hurwitz and his cohorts is pending in Judge Lynn Hughes' federal court in Houston, awaiting rulings on various motions, including one filed by Hurwitz's lawyers to dismiss the case. The Office of Thrift Supervision's suit is scheduled for a hearing in May 1997 in Houston, but OTS has not frozen Maxxam's assets, as it has the power to do if it thinks they will not be around once the lawsuit is over. Martel's suit seeking damages on behalf of U.S. taxpayers has been transferred, also to Texas.

One possible sign of hope: Deputy Interior Secretary Garamendi recently said that the federal and California governments are discussing with Hurwitz the acquisition of Headwaters Forest ó although they are not specifically talking about a debt-for-nature swap or settling the lawsuits. It will be several months before the public can expect to hear of a possible agreement.

That's about the time the young Coho salmon of Headwaters will be searching for rapidly declining cool waters and scarce adequate cover.
###

Resources: The Rose Foundation for Communities and the Environment, 510-658-0702; Environmental Protection Information Center, 707-923-2931; Bruce Babbitt, Secretary of the Interior, 202-208-7351.

Issue #207, September-October 1996
Dollars & Sense magazine, 29 Winter Street, Boston, MA 02108, USA, provides left perspectives on economic affairs. It is published six times a year and is edited by a collective of economists, journalists, and activists committed to social justice and economic democracy.
Copyright © 2002 Economic Affairs Bureau, Inc.

ASJE - another cog in the activist wheel

Houston Principles
of the
Alliance for Sustainable Jobs and the Environment

Preamble
On May 19, 1999, environmental and labor leaders confronted CEO Charles Hurwitz in Houston to demand that his Maxxam Corporation, which owns Kaiser Aluminum and Pacific Lumber Company, be held accountable for its impact on working people, communities and the environment.

By clear cutting ancient redwoods in Northern California, and by locking out striking steelworkers in five cities, the Maxxam corporation and its subsidiaries, Pacific Lumber Company and Kaiser Aluminum Corporation, have become icons of corporate irresponsibility.

Recognizing that we have a common interest in making corporations more accountable for their behavior world wide, environmental and labor leaders have formed the Alliance for Sustainable Jobs and the Environment and circulated the following statement, dubbed the "Houston Principles."

Whereas:

* The spectacular accumulation of wealth by corporations and America's most affluent during the past two decades has come with a huge price tag

* Corporations have become more powerful than the government entities designed to regulate them.

* The goal of a giant, global corporation is to maximize wealth and to wield political power on its own behalf. Too often, corporate leaders regard working people, communities, and the natural world as resources to be used and thrown away.

* Recognizing the tremendous stakes, labor unions and environmental advocates are beginning to recognize our common ground. Together we can challenge illegitimate corporate authority over our country's and communities' governing decisions.

* While we may not agree on everything, we are determined to accelerate our efforts to make alliances as often as possible


We believe that:

* A healthy future for the economy and the environment requires a dynamic alliance between labor, management, and environmental advocates.

* The same forces that threaten economic and biological sustainability undermine the democratic process.

* The drive for short-term profits without regard for long-term sustainability hurts working people, communities, and the earth.

* Labor, environmental and community groups need to take action to organize as a counter-balance to abusive corporate power

The environmental and labor advocates who have signed these principles resolve to work together to:

* Remind the public that the original purpose behind the creation of corporations was to serve the public interest - namely working people, communities, and the earth.

* Seek stricter enforcement of labor laws and advocate for new laws to guarantee working people their right to form unions and their right to bargain collectively.

* Make workplaces, communities and the planet safer by reducing waste and greenhouse gas emissions.

* Demand that global trade agreements include enforceable labor and environmental standards.

* Promote forward-thinking business models that allow for sustainability over the long term while protecting working people, communities, and the environment.

This ground-breaking alliance of labor and environmentalists invites all people to join with us in a spirit of creative cooperation. Together, we can forge a partnership that protects people and the planet.

Back to top


Signed

ENVIRONMENT
Bruce Hamilton
Conservation Director
Sierra Club

Paul Hawken
Author


David Brower
Brower Fund


John A. Knox
Executive Director
Earth Island Institute

John Cavanagh
Director
Institute for Policy Studies

Michael Renner
Senior Researcher
Worldwatch Institute

Richard Drury
Acting Executive Director
Commentates for a Better Environment

Juliette Majot
Executive Director
International Rivers Network

Brent Blackwelder
President
Friends of the Earth

Carl Anthony
Executive Director
Urban Habitat Program

Jonathan Parfrey, MDA
Executive Director
Physicians for Social Responsibility

Suzanne Murphy
Managing Director
Redefining Progress

Paul Schwartz
National Campaign Director
Clean Water Action

Mark Ritchie
President
Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy

Carol L. Wright
Executive Director
Klamath Forest Alliance

Kelly Quirke
Executive Director
Rainforest Action Network

Jim Jontz
Executive Director
American Lands Alliance

John Passacantando
Executive Director
Ozone Action

Lois Gibbs
Executive Director
Center for Health and Environmental Justice

Tom Turner
Director of Publications
Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund

Peter Rosset
Executive Director
Food First/ Institute for Food and Development Policy

Paul Mason
Executive Director
Environment Protection Information Center (EPIC)

Hal Kane
Executive Director
Pacific Environment and Resource Center


Marguerite Young
California Director
Clean Water Action


Huey D. Johnson
President
Resource Renewal Institute

Diane Takvorian
Executive Director
Environmental Health Coalition

Paul Spitler
Executive Director
California Wilderness Coalition

Patricia M. Clary
Executive Director
Californians for Alternatives to Toxics

Samuel La Buddy
Executive Director
Endangered Species Project

Christine Stevens
President
Animal Welfare Institute

Paul Hughes
Executive Director
Forests Forever

Dr. Henry Clark
Executive Director
West County Toxics Coalition

Gary Cohen
Director
Environmental Health Fund

Greg Small
Executive Director
Pesticide Watch

David Korten
President
People Centered Development Forum

Ted Smith
Director
Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition

Franses F. Korten
Executive Director
The Positive Futures Network

Dave Henson
Executive Director
Occidental Arts and Ecology Center

Jay Letto
President
Central Cascades Alliance

David Cobb
Secretary
Green Party of Texas

Jill Ratner
President
Rose Foundation

Craig Thomas
Director
The Center for Sierra Nevada Conservation

Gina Giazzoni
State College Coordinator
Allegheny Defense Project

Adam Roberts
Research Associate
Society for Animal Protective Legislation

Sanford Lewis
Attorney
Strategic Counsel on Corporate Accountability

Karen Pickett
Coordinator
Bay Area Coalition for Headwaters

Luke Cole
Director
Center on Race, Poverty & the Environment

David E Ortman
President
Wise Use Movement

Thomas R. Lent
President
Association of Flight Attendants--Alaska Airlines

Wenonah Hauter
Director
Public Citizen's Critical Mass Energy Project

Paula Palmer
Executive Director
Global Response

Cal Broomhead
Bureau of Energy Conservation
San Francisco, CA

Prof. Lee Altenberg
Information and Computer Sciences,
University of Hawaii at Manoa

Jim Puckett
Director
Asia Pacific Environmental Exchange (APEX)

David Wood
Senior Associate
Center on Wisconsin Strategy

Lisa Mastny
Staff Researcher
Worldwatch Institute

William A Shutkin
President
New Ecology Inc.

Chris Ford
Steering Committee Member
Southern Arizona Alliance for Economic Justice.

Charles M Miller, esq.
Attorney
Law Office of Charles M. Miller

Celia F. Alario
Communications Team
USWA and Amazon Watch

Thomas Ryan
Community Services Director
San Francisco Labor Council

Scott Tundermann
Sustainable Energy Choice Project
Institute for Science and Interdisciplinary Studies

EMT O'Nan
Director
Protect All Children's Environment

Bill Welsch
President
Safe Alternative for our Forest Environment (SAFE)

Beth Burrows
President/Director
The Edmonds Institute

Harlin Savage
Director
Colorado Forest Program

Fredy Champagne
President
Veterans for Peace, Inc.

Julia Butterfly Hill



Alan Rose
Professor Emeritus
University of Idaho

Nancy Kubasek
Author
"Environmental Law"

Hugh M. Carola
Coordinator
Hackensack Meadowlands Preservation Alliance

Mary Bull
SF Coordinator
Boycott the Gap Campaign

John Grech
Public Officer
Earth Worker Inc., Canada

Steve Brooks
Coordinator
Virginia Forest Watch

Larry Weiss
Coordinator
Labor, Globalization and Human Rights Project
Resource Center of the Americas

Stephen Bezruchka, MD, MPH
Affiliate Assistant Professor
Department of Health Services
University of Washington

David Muhly
Chair
Virginia Forest Watch

Bill Devall
Chairman
Deep Ecology Resource Center

Shirley J Shelburn
Humbolt Watershed Council
Rt 1 Trinidad ,Ca 95570

Ken Miller
Salmon Forever
Mckinleyville, Ca 95519

Marianne DE Sobrino
Redwoods Chapter Sierra Club
Eureka, Ca 95503

Kyle Haines
Forest Protection Coordinator
Klamath Forest Alliance

John Sellers
Director
Rukus Society

Karen Litfin, Associate Professor
Department of Political Science
University of Washington - Seattle

Bob Martel
Executive Director
Humboldt Watershed Council

Chad Hanson
Executive Director
John Muir Project

Christine Cooper, Ph.D
Faculty of Business
University of New Brunswick Saint John

Jacek Purat
School of Information Management and Systems
University of California at Berkeley

Steve Thompson
Natural Resource Consultant
Whitefish, MI

Cam Walker
Friends of the Earth Australia


Darryl Cherney, Executive Director
Environmentally Sound Promotions
Redway, CA

Stephen Graves
Land Use Consultant
Soquel, CA

Bryony Schwan, Exec. Director
Women's Voices for the Earth
Missoula, MT

Nancy Fesco
Boreal Forest Campaign Coordinator
Northern Alaska Environmental Center

Julian Powers
Co-Chair for Legislative Affiars
Spokane Transportation Choice Coalition

Kimberly Burkland
Director
Central Cascades Alliance

Robert Cramer
Co-founder
Taxpayers for Headwaters

Martha Bergotten
Campaign Coordinator
Southern Appalachian Biodiversity Project

Lois Barber
International Coordinator
EarthAction

Tim Bristol
Organizer
Southeast Alaska Conservation Council

Larry Campbell
Executive Director
Friends of the Bitterroot

Bill Metzger
Publisher
Great Lakes Brewing News

Kurt Newick
Global Warming activist


Juliette Beck
Campaign Director, Global Exchange

Why pay Salzman

Why pay Salzman for warmed over Times-Standard articles? Just google Pacific Lumber/Maxxam or sign up for your own google alerts...

In a message dated 3/31/2007 4:29:50 PM Pacific Daylight Time, aeb@inreach.com writes:

”Scopac doesn't follow the rules; the rules follow Scopac” - Scopac attorney Kathryn Coleman

http://www.times-standard.com/local/ci_5565506
Palco's timber assets assessed
John Driscoll The Times-Standard
Eureka Times Standard
03/31/2007

With arguments that made the issue as clear as mist in the redwoods, attorneys battled for a day over whether the Pacific Lumber Co.'s timberlands are a single project that might be reorganized apart from its milling operations.

Lawyers for the noteholders that carry $714 million in debt secured by 210,000 acres of timberland held by Palco subsidiary Scotia Pacific looked to convince a federal bankruptcy judge in Texas that since all of its activities on the land -- and its revenue -- revolve around growing trees, it should be declared a single asset.

Scotia Pacific argued that trees are personal property, not real property, and that the numerous activities of the subsidiary's scientists show the company is too complicated to be deemed a single asset. Its attorneys spent hours extracting testimony from its scientists on every aspect of their efforts, which they claimed are the only way it is allowed to cut trees.

The Times-Standard listened to the Corpus Christi U.S. District Court proceeding by teleconference, which was open to the public at the newspaper's Eureka office.

Noteholders' attorney Evan Flaschen asked Judge Richard Schmidt to declare Scotia Pacific a single asset company and let the case move on to the pending brawl over what the timberlands are worth. That will weigh heavily toward whether Palco and its parent company Maxxam keep control of the timber, or whether the noteholders foreclose on it and reorganize.

”Let's bring on the battle that we all know is going to happen,” Flaschen said.

Case law on the subject is limited, especially since Congress in 2005 amended the single asset statute to no longer exclude properties worth more than $4 million. Attorneys were stuck with trying to compare Scopac to apartment complexes and golf courses that have been put through the bankruptcy process.

Scopac attorney Kathryn Coleman said the company's revenues are generated by its 65 employees -- without whose technical expertise it would not be able to satisfy regulators and gain access to the timber. The complex hydrological, biological and geologic studies Scotia Pacific performs also make it a commercial science lab on the cutting edge, she said.

”Scopac doesn't follow the rules; the rules follow Scopac,” Coleman said.

Palco attorney Shelby Jordan added that if Scopac is a single asset, every farm and every oil and gas company would be one, too. The land generates nothing, he claimed, and the situation is not like a landowner who passively holds an investment property while waiting for the market to turn.

Schmidt said that he would guess any farm -- outside the family farm -- is a single-asset entity, since its revenues are derived almost exclusively from the land.

In closing arguments, Flaschen said all the complicated regulatory endeavors on Scotia Pacific's lands are for one purpose only: to grow trees.

”It's amazing to say that a tree growing in the ground isn't real estate,” he said. “Of course it's real estate.”

He added that Palco's stated “doomsday scenario” -- that the noteholders acquisition of the timberlands would mean the mill would be shut down -- is baseless. Palco is a logical buyer for the timber, he said, and there's no reason to expect that the bond holders would shut down a business whose sole revenue is from its trees.

Schmidt took the matter under submission, stopping the hearing on it after one day. He also briefly addressed concerns from attorneys about when he might rule on a request by the noteholders and others to have the case moved to Oakland. He said work on that decision is largely done, and could be filed as early as next week.

John Driscoll can be reached at 441-0504 or jdriscoll at times-standard.com.
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This article is posted here as supplemental background material. For discussion and more information visit watchpaul.blogspot.com.
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