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Lawsuit over destroyed citrus trees yet to yield fruit for plaintiffs

Naple News – November 15, 2011

In the Lee County case, a hearing was held in Fort Myers on Tuesday on a flurry of pretrial motions.

The Lee County case is set for trial next summer. It involves about 22,000 residential trees on 8,000 properties, primarily in Cape Coral. The state is already on the hook for millions of dollars. In Broward County, the judgment has grown to more than $10 million, with interest. In Palm Beach County, the judgment was for more than $19 million.

“They haven’t gotten paid yet. But I’m going to get it for them,” said Robert Gilbert, a Coral Gables attorney who represents homeowners across the state who lost their trees.

The Department of Agriculture has argued that a special appropriation is required before it can pay out any money to homeowners who lost their citrus trees. The agency’s position is that the Legislature would have to approve a so-called claims bill to pay the amount that’s owed.

“I don’t believe that is correct and that is what we are in the process of challenging right now in court,” Gilbert said. “It’s terrible that they haven’t paid these people their money.”

There are other cases pending in Miami-Dade and Orange counties.

None of the trees involved in any of the class-action suits had canker, but they were located within 1,900 feet of an infected tree so they were removed because they were considered to be exposed to the disease.

In court Tuesday, Lee Circuit Judge Keith Kyle ruled on some of the pretrial motions, but decisions on other motions might not come for weeks, including whether there should be two trials, one to determine liability and another to determine damages.

Gilbert argued there was no need for a trial to determine liability in Lee County because he’d already won that argument twice on Florida’s east coast and the facts were similar in the three cases. He said there should only be one trial to determine damages here. “We have done this routine for 11 years now,” he told the judge.

“We don’t think it’s the right thing to do,” he added. “We don’t think it’s the legal thing to do.”The state has also appealed the class-action certification for the Miami-Dade case and is awaiting a decision. That could determine whether there will be one or two trials in Lee County, Gilbert said.

At Tuesday’s hearing, Wes Parsons, who represents the Florida Department of Agriculture, said there needs to be a liability trial in Lee County. He argued Lee County is different from Palm Beach and Broward counties because it has a more “significant citrus industry.” The homeowners who lost trees here lived much closer to commercial groves in both Lee and Hendry counties, posing a more direct threat, he said.

“Every county stands on its own merit,” Parsons said.

The state has argued the trees homeowners lost had no value because eventually they would have gotten citrus canker. “It looks healthy, but it’s not healthy,” Parsons said.

Although it’s not harmful to humans, canker causes ugly lesions on leaves, stems and fruit. It can also make fruit drop off trees too early.

The state’s eradication program came to an abrupt halt after a rash of hurricanes spread the disease across the state. “Suing the department has been popular the last 15 years or so,” Parsons told the judge.

John and Dee Klockow, who are plaintiffs in the Lee County class-action lawsuit, sat in on the hearing Tuesday. They lost what they describe as five “healthy trees.” They were grapefruit and orange trees.

The couple received a $100 Walmart voucher for the first tree destroyed and $55 for each additional tree lost to state canker crews.

Dee Klockow said her grandson, who was five when the state removed her trees, still remembers picking oranges in her backyard. She was carrying a picture of him plucking the fruit.

She remembers seeing her trees ground up and the dust flying up in the air. “It brings back such angry memories,” she said.

“It’s not even the money,” said her husband, John. “It’s the principle of the thing.”

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