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Viva Gypsy. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/examiner/archive/1999/09/11/ NEWS11039.dtl Lumber company sued for logging accident Seth Rosenfeld OF THE EXAMINER STAFF Sept. 11, 1999 ©1999 San Francisco Examiner Protester's parents say Pacific Lumber caused son's death The parents of the man who was crushed to death by a felled tree while protesting Pacific Lumber Co.'s logging of ancient Redwoods have sued the Northern California firm alleging the company caused his death. The suit, filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Oakland, claims Pacific Lumber should have known protesters were on its property but failed to take adequate safety precautions, leading to the death last year of environmentalist David Nathan Chain in the Headwaters Forest. "I think my son would still be alive today except for the way they carried out their policy," said his father, David Allen Chain, a paint supervisor for a firm that makes oil tanks in Pasadena, Texas, near Houston. "They ought to be held responsible for it." The complaint claims Pacific Lumber officials also knew that the logger who cut the fatal tree soon after threatening Chain had violent tendencies, but failed to control him. The logger, Arlington Earl "A.E." Ammons, was aware that the protesters were around and felled the tree "at the activists," out of the usual order and without warning, it says. Ammons and his assistant, Rhett Reback, had a radio and a cell phone and could have called security personnel to remove the activists, it says. John Campbell, Pacific Lumber's president, said Friday he would not comment on the complaint until he had read it. But he noted that the Humboldt County district attorney and sheriff had investigated and declined to file charges against the firm or its employees. "It's flat out ridiculous," Reback, 21, said when told of the suit. "We had no clue that they were out there. We didn't do nothing unusual in any way about falling that tree. "There is no way that any us who work out in the woods would intentionally hurt an Earth Firster, even though we don't like them," he added. Ammons, 52, could not be reached for comment Friday. He has previously said he thought the activists had left, that he yelled a warning before cutting the tree and didn't mean to hit them with it. The complaint accuses Scotia-based Pacific Lumber, Campbell, Ammons and Reback of the wrongful death of Chain, negligence and violations of the Unruh Civil Rights Act, a state law that bars violence based on race, religion or political affiliation. It seeks an unspecified amount for medical and funeral costs and other damages. The suit contends Pacific Lumber encouraged the anti-logging protests in a scheme to enhance the perceived value of the Headwaters Forest and boost the price state and federal officials paid for the property. Federal and state officials paid $480 million in March as part of deal for the land, which boasts one of the world's last large groves of ancient redwoods. Campbell called the contention that the firm had encouraged protests "nonsense." He countered that Chain and the other protesters "were trespassing and were trained by Earth First." Eureka lawyer Steven Schectman, who brought the suit on behalf of Chain's parents, acknowledged that Chain and the other protesters were trained in nonviolent civil disobedience by Earth First, an environmental group known for sit-ins on lumber company property. But while Chain was ready to accept the legal consequences of trespassing, Schectman said, "you don't get a free pass to kill somebody for trespass." Chain, who was 24 years old and had planned to go to medical school, was killed Sept. 17, 1998, when he and seven other protesters hiked onto Pacific Lumber property to protest what they believed was illegal logging, the suit says. They were part of a decade-long tradition of environmental protest in which activists have trespassed more than 17,000 times on Pacific Lumber property, resulting in more than 2,500 trespass citations, it says. No activist was ever convicted for an act of violence or resisting arrest, the suit says, though Pacific Lumber employees often engaged in violence against forest activists. "Death, however, was not the result of any of these actions, and activists did not anticipate death as one of the risks" of protesting, it says. Despite the annual protests, Pacific Lumber refused to set an adequate policy on how employees should safely handle encounters with activists, it says. Campbell has previously said the firm's policy requires employees to notify their supervisors when they see activists and to refrain from confrontations. The morning he died, Chain and his fellow protesters encountered Ammons and Reback cutting trees. The activists approached Ammons in a peaceful way to try to get them to stop logging, the suit says. But Ammons responded by screaming obscenities and violent threats and chasing them. Within an hour, Ammons cut a 120-foot redwood tree that killed Chain, the suit says. Pacific Lumber never disciplined Ammons, even though his threats of physical violence were recorded on videotape, it says. Ammons had often boasted that he would hurt or kill any activists around his logging operations, it says, but the firm "continued to . . . allow him to work in an environment that could offer him the opportunity to act upon his well-known threats of death and violence towards activists." ©1999 San Francisco Examiner Page A 4
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