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Palm Beach County citrus tree owners don't need legislative OK for canker payments, judge rules

Palm Beach Post – November 28, 2011

The state should not wait on the legislature to pay the $19.2 million owed Palm Beach County homeowners whose healthy citrus trees were destroyed during the state’s canker eradication program, a judge has ruled.

Palm Beach County Circuit Judge Robin Rosenberg ruled last week that the state is constitutionally required to pay full compensation because it engaged in taking property.

The state will appeal the ruling, spokesman Sterling Ivey of the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services said Monday. The department stands by its position that the homeowners’ attorneys must file a bill asking the Florida Legislature to appropriate the money.

“Obviously, we don’t agree with the judge’s ruling,” Ivey said.

Bill Williams and Robert Gilbert, attorneys representing the homeowners, said the ruling is a milestone, but it does not mean that home­owners will receive money anytime soon.

“The state was claiming that no matter how much we recovered, it would not have to pay the bill. As Judge Rosenberg has now found, that position is dead wrong,” Gilbert said. “It is not appropriate to force property owners to go and beg the legislature for money when the state has taken their private property.”

If the verdict and rulings are upheld, and the department does not agree to pay from its assets or the general fund, the plaintiffs have the right to levy the department’s assets to satisfy the judgment, Williams said.

“The whole case is an example of what is wrong with our government – oppressive and wasteful bureaucrats who are out of control and trampling upon our most fundamental property rights,” Williams said. “It is time for some accountability.”

In August, Rosenberg ruled that 40,000 Palm Beach County home­owners whose healthy, uninfected citrus trees were destroyed during the state’s failed canker eradication program were owed $19.2 million. The average award amounts to $288.

The state argued that the trees had no value.

During a two-week trial in March, a 12-member jury had determined that homeowners were owed additional compensation for the 66,493 trees.

While fighting an 11-year state and federal battle to eradicate the fruit-blemishing bacterial disease, Florida offered homeowners $100 Walmart gift cards for the first tree removed and $55 for each additional tree.

The $1.6 billion eradication program ended in January 2006 when the federal government withdrew funding and declared the fruit-blemishing disease endemic to Florida.

More than 16.5 million infected and exposed commercial and residential citrus trees were destroyed.

The state also owes more than $10 million to homeowners in Broward County after a court decision there, and similar cases are pending in Miami-Dade, Orange and Lee counties.

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