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Pacific Lumber Company (PL) filed a strategic lawsuit against public participation (SLAPP) against activists and residents protesting logging of old-growth forests in California's Mattole River basin on April 6. PL, joined by Columbia Helicopter Company of Oregon, Steve Wills Trucking, Lewis Logging, Russ Ranch and Timber Company and its owner Lane Russ, rancher Lotta Vevoda and Scotia Pacific Company, filed a civil lawsuit April 6 in Humboldt Superior Court. "Northcoast Earth First!," "Mattole Forest Defenders," 10 individuals and "Does 1 - 200" were named as defendants.
SLAPP suits constrain individuals' ability to protest the activities of corporations that are threatening or damaging to them, their community and the environment-basically legal assaults on first amendment rights. Given that the targets of such lawsuits are often people of sparse monetary resources, the purpose is clearly harassment, intimidation and dissuasion of potential involvement in a campaign. SLAPP suits have been around for a couple of decades, targeting activists fighting developers, toxic polluters and liquidation logging in what often ends up being a war of resources.
PL's lawsuit cites acts of trespass, erection of blockades and other protest activities on several timber harvest plans (THPs) filed in the last year by PL in the Mattole River Watershed. Those working to save the salmon streams and hillsides of the Mattole have spent a lot of time petitioning agencies involved in the approval process, filing legal challenges and coordinating acquisition efforts as well as taking part in direct actions. Some of those named in the lawsuit have meticulously worked through the system and not participated in any civil disobedience. The diversity of defendants could ultimately work against PL in that a broadly cast net has less credibility. There is also the double-jeopardy bind protesters are placed in, given that they are already subject to a tumble through the court system and penalties for criminal charges when they trespass onto PL property.
Harassment lawsuits are not a new tactic for PL. In the mid- and late '80s, PL filed harassment lawsuits against several groups of Earth First!ers. PL never did get much out of those lawsuits, and they won't this time. Like the Cove/ Mallard SLAPP suit of the '90s, the complaint names "anyone working in concert with the named defendants." In response to PL's quote to the media that that includes "anyone who so much as sends a chocolate bar to the Mattole Forest Defenders," a creative supporter has put out a call for others to "join the growing Doe family" by sending candy bars (see announcement page 71).
Some suspect revenge as PL's motive, since this lawsuit comes close on the heels of a $3.3-million settlement PL paid to residents of Stafford, California, after a logging-caused landslide. This buried seven homes, caused others to be uninhabitable and brought grief to the tiny rural community, inhabited mostly by former or current timber workers who filed a lawsuit against the company seeking relief for their losses.
This action is clearly designed to quash dissent and protest against PL, subsidiary of the notorious Maxxam Corporation which has in the last decade been found to be in violation of a vast array of state, federal and local laws, ranging from the Clean Water Act to labor laws.
Current legal actions against Maxxam/PL include an environmental lawsuit charging one million violations of the Clean Water Act, a wrongful death lawsuit concerning the death of David "Gypsy" Chain, claims by the US Treasury's Office of Thrift Supervision concerning a $1.6-billion bailout of a savings and loan controlled by Maxxam CEO Charles Hurwitz and continuing challenges to several of its THF's.
This is a company that has no qualms about flouting the law. Through the Headwaters Deal, PL got a Habitat Conservation Plan to shield them from the Endangered Species Act, and now they want a SLAPP suit to shield them from protesters. They seek to chill dissent, but they forget that tens of thousands of people have showed up to protest their logging activities. They can't silence that many voices.
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