Florida to pay $11.5 million for cutting citrus trees

The jury verdict comes in the first of five lawsuits seeking compensation for backyard trees destroyed in disease-prevention efforts.

By Warren Richey | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

from the May 8, 2008 edition

Page 1 of 2

Fort Lauderdale - A south Florida jury has ordered the State of Florida to pay $11.5 million as compensation to 58,225 residents of Broward County after the state cut down all the citrus trees in their yards in a disease-prevention effort.

The verdict, announced Tuesday evening, was significantly lower than lawyers for the homeowners had requested. Several homeowners disagreed with the size of the award and lawyers for both sides suggest they may appeal.

"I'm extremely disappointed," said Robert Gilbert, a Coral Gables lawyer, representing the homeowners.

"This case from Day 1 has been about the constitutional guarantee of full compensation when private property is taken for a public purpose," he said. "What happened here is nothing less than a chipping away at a fundamental guarantee in the Constitution."

On a per tree basis, the award is $86 per tree for the 133,720 trees destroyed in Broward County as part of an emergency effort to insulate the state's commercial citrus industry from an outbreak of citrus canker disease.

State agriculture officials pursued the controversial eradication policy from January 2000 to January 2006 after canker disease was detected in a residential neighborhood in Miami-Dade County.

State work crews confronted residents with court orders and chain saws, sparking an outcry by Floridians who treasure their backyard citrus trees and the fruit they produce.

The homeowners had asked the 12-member jury to pay full compensation ranging from $280 for a healthy six-foot tree to $930 for a healthy 10-foot tree.

But state officials said during the three-week trial that the real value of the trees was zero since they had been exposed to the citrus canker disease.

During two days of deliberations, the jury split on the issue of full compensation. Some jurors sided with the state, feeling that since the trees were exposed to canker they were worthless because eventually they would develop the disease. But others felt homeowners were due compensation because their trees were healthy at the time they were destroyed.

The $11.5 million verdict was a compromise , according to some jurors.

When offset against payments already made to homeowners who lost trees, the award amounts to an extra $4.4 million – or roughly $34 more per tree.

The jury verdict comes in the first of five class-action lawsuits in Florida seeking compensation for more than 577,000 backyard citrus trees destroyed in the state's citrus canker eradication program.

Similar class-action lawsuits are pending in Miami-Dade, Palm Beach, Lee, and Orange Counties.

Mr. Gilbert said the state Department of Agriculture is the losing party in the suit and it is up to them to appeal. But he said he expects to file a cross-appeal challenging a trial court ruling that permitted the state to present evidence that healthy citrus trees cut down in Broward County would have inevitably contracted the canker disease.

The lawyer said full compensation must be based on the value of private property at the time of seizure, not on speculation about future value. To the extent that the jury considered the future value of the citrus trees, he said, the verdict is invalid.

Page 1 | 2 | Next Page