Oregon Supreme Court won’t hear appeal of $1B timber verdict

The Oregon Supreme Court docket has declined to listen to an enchantment from timber counties looking for to maximise logging income on 700,000 acres of state forestland.

The state’s highest court docket denied the counties’ enchantment with out issuing an opinion on Friday, quietly closing a chapter in a long-running debate over forest administration in Oregon and a greater than $1 billion lawsuit over timber income.

“It’s the tip of the highway for what has been a false narrative for much too lengthy … that it’s the general public forestland’s obligation to offer the majority of the revenues for native communities,” stated Ralph Bloemers, who represented fishing and conservation teams within the case.

The choice leaves in place a decrease court docket ruling from April saying that Oregon can handle forests for a spread of values that embody recreation, water high quality and wildlife habitat — not simply logging income.

“In the present day’s announcement by the Oregon Supreme Court docket is disappointing,” Linn County Commissioner Roger Nyquist stated in an announcement. “The underlying difficulty of forest practices on public lands is left unresolved.”

Linn is one in all a number of Oregon counties and particular taxing districts that obtain a reduce of logging earnings from forestland they gave to the state within the Nineteen Thirties and ‘40s. Oregon agreed to handle these lands, which had been largely burned and logged over on the time of donation, “in order to safe the best everlasting worth of these lands to the state.”

Oregon has funneled thousands and thousands of {dollars} to the counties over time, bolstering native budgets. However 13 counties took the state to court docket, saying the state was shortchanging them. “Best everlasting worth,” they argued, equals most timber income.

A Linn County jury agreed in 2019 and ordered Oregon to pay $1.1 billion plus curiosity in damages to the timber counties. The Oregon Court docket of Appeals reversed the decision earlier this 12 months.

Huge cash purchased Oregon’s forests. Small timber communities are paying the value.

The Oregon Division of Justice, which represented the state authorities within the case, issued a written assertion Friday calling the Supreme Court docket’s resolution a “victory for Oregon’s setting and for sound forest administration usually.”

“Our forests serve a spread of environmental, leisure, and financial functions,” the assertion reads. “By permitting what we argued was the right resolution of the Court docket of Appeals to face, we’ve a swifter decision and finality after a 6-year dispute.”