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Legal Abuse Costing Us

published: February 22nd 2010
by: Jean Barton
source: Red Bluff News

At the American National CattleWomen general membership meeting in San Antonio during the Beef Cattle Industry convention, Karen Budd-Falen, cowboy lawyer, addressed,  The Abuse of the Litigation Process by so-called non profit groups.

It was another informative session, because Karen's latest project is Western Legacy Alliance (www.westernlegacyallliance.org). "Our federal government is paying environmental groups to sue the federal government." $4.7 billion has been spent by the federal government, and no one knows where the money is going. The Justice Department doesn't know.

There is Western Watershed Project, whose goal is eliminate ranching. Between 2000 and 2009, it has filed 91 lawsuits, with a payment of $1,150,000 for attorney fees. Wild Earth Guardian has filed 180 lawsuits. Friends of Earth is another group.

Nine groups have filed 2,875 cases in nine years in Federal District Court.

There are two major ways for them to file lawsuits. Judgement Fund - appropriations every year with no spending cap.

The second way is Equal Access to Justice Act (EAJC) - money comes out of agency budget to pay winning lawyers and caps attorney fee at $125 per hour. But $ 650 is where they get around the cap.

Ranchers can't get their attorney fees paid, but environmental groups can. Your tax dollars pay attorney fees on both sides. If the US Forest Service is sued, the government pays the US Forest Service lawyer, and loses the suit because it did not respond within the allotted time. The environmental side lawyers get paid by the government.

Many of the cases have listed and used Endangered Species to file their lawsuits.

Center Biological Diversity - in Washington has filed 12 cases. Six cases it won with $ 941,000 cost of attorney fees for Giant Palouse Earth Spitting Worm. The government took more than 90 days to respond to the petition, and lost. CBD won.

Wild Earth Guardians sued FEMA to stop selling flood insurance, and now it is unable to build houses.

Jeff Falkner, said it is not a western cowboy issue, because in 20 states, there have been 1,269 cases filed.

Here in Northern California, since I got home, Center for Biological Diversity filed lawsuits against the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection in seven counties - including Shasta, Tehama,Trinity, Amador, Calaveras, El Dorado and Modoc Counties. The suits claim the agency violated environmental and forestry rules in approving 15 Sierra Pacific Industries logging plans.

"All the planned clear-cuts are on land owned by Sierra Pacific, the state's largest private landowner," said Mark Pawlicki, spokesman for the Anderson-based company.

"Pawlicki said the Center for Biological Diversity - a group started in New Mexico that now has offices in San Francisco, Washington D.C. and other parts of the country - has filed numerous lawsuits in recent years. Its real goal is to shut down the forest products industry, Pawlicki said." This according to a Redding Record Searchlight article on Jan. 29.

When we were on the 4th annual Farm City bus tour in the fall, Mark Lathrop of Sierra Pacific showed pictures taken in the same location over 10 years' time, when it was a clear cut of 30 acres, and now the planted pine and fir trees are 15 feet tall.

What I really appreciate is the fact that Sierra Pacific replants within one year. It could be a planned harvest or from wild fires, but the private timber lands are replanted while dead trees and snags still stand on the U. S. Forest Service lands years after a fire goes through.

SPI uses tree seedlings and species from local sources so the trees are adapted to grow at that particular elevation and location. They leave islands of old growth timber for the wildlife when a site is harvested.

Another story in the last month was "The Arizona-based Center for Biological Diversity is calling for a new review of the California Deptartment of Fish & Game's program to stock hatchery- raised fish in lakes and streams around the state. It said DFG trout bred for recreational fishing will hunt native fish and amphibians. They claim in the Trinity Alps the trout eat the Cascades frog. In the suit, the center asks DFG to craft a new study of the fish-stocking program and propose ways to protect animals, such as the Chinook salmon, mountain yellow-legged frogs and long-toed salamanders.

"In response to a similar lawsuit by the center and other environmental groups in 2006, the state released an environmental report about the stocking program last month. The latest lawsuit challenges that report." This according to a story in the Record-Searchlight, Feb.11.

In San Antonio National Cattlemen Beef Association members approved policy calling for reform of the Equal Access to Justice Act. While EAJA was established by Congress to ensure that individuals, small businesses or public-interest groups with limited financial resources could seek judicial recourse from unreasonable government actions, a lack of federal oversight has allowed the Act to be abused, particularly by environmental-activist organizations, which often target farmers and ranchers under the guise of public interest. In a six-year period, non-profit environmental groups have filed more than 1,500 lawsuits and in turn the federal government has paid out billions in taxpayer dollars in settlements and legal fees under EAJA and other fee-shifting statutes in cases against the U.S. government.

KAren Budd-Falen, with her husband Frank Falen, is the owner of the Budd-Falen Law Offices, L.L.C. in Cheyenne, Wyo.

Before moving back to Wyoming, Karen served for three years in the Reagan Administration, U.S. Department of the Interior, Washington, D.C., as a special assistant to the assistant secretary for Land and Minerals Management. She later served as a law clerk to the assistant solicitor for Water and Power and has worked as an attorney at Mountain States Legal Foundation, a conservative public interest legal foundation in Denver.

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