Tree owners offered some comfort for loss
 
February 13, 2004
 
Florida's Supreme Court hands a victory to the citrus-eradication program, but it includes a silver lining for owners of citrus trees.
 
By Gail Epstein-Nieves
 
 
Miami Herald,
 
Miami, Florida
 
 
To submit a Letter to the Editor: HeraldEd@herald.com
 

Homeowners will not be able to save their canker-exposed citrus trees from state chain saws, but Thursday's Florida Supreme Court ruling upholding the canker-eradication law increased the chances that they will be paid what their trees are worth.

While the court unanimously upheld the law's constitutionality, the justices ruled that the state is obligated to pay ''more than token compensation'' -- the $55 or the $100 vouchers it has been offering -- for seemingly healthy trees.

Lawyers predicted a crush of class-action lawsuits by property owners whose healthy trees were cut down just because they were within 1,900 feet of an infected one.

''If there are two things in life -- money and everything else -- we'll take the money argument on this one,'' said John Dellagloria, city attorney for North Miami, which challenged the law in Miami-Dade.

''Perhaps the indirect result of this opinion will be that the citrus canker program will be curtailed because it's hitting [the state] right in the pocketbook,'' he said.

Mitch Burnstein, a Fort Lauderdale eminent domain attorney, said, 'The fact that six Supreme Court justices unanimously agreed that the destruction of healthy trees is a 'compensable taking' will create a stampede to the courthouse. The state had better be ready to pony up.''

The decision, which upheld one by the Fourth District Court of Appeal, said the law did not violate homeowners' due process rights and was a valid exercise of the state's ''police power'' to protect the health, welfare and safety of the public.

But the decision also held that the $55 and $100 compensation vouchers established by the Legislature "sets a floor but does not determine the amount of compensation.... When the state destroys private property, the state is obligated to pay just and fair compensation as determined in a court of law.''

In using that language, ''the court is really tipping its hand'' on a class-action appeal it has yet to rule on, that directly attacks the state's canker voucher program as an unfair ''taking,'' Burnstein said.

Miami lawyer Bobby Gilbert, an attorney for plaintiffs in the class-action case, said Thursday he thinks the trees will be found to be worth $750 to $1,000 each.

The state has run out of money in the past to pay for destroyed trees, and many property owners have complained that they submitted paperwork to the state but have not been paid.

Justice Barbara Pariente wrote the opinion. Justices Harry Lee Anstead, Fred Lewis and Peggy Quince concurred, while Justice Raoul Cantero, whose former law firm represented the state in the canker case, recused himself. Justices Charles Wells and Kenneth Bell concurred with the decision but did not join in the opinion.