Earth Firster seriously injured while scaling a redwood tree

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June 14, 2001 Santa Cruz Sentinel

Earth First! activist critically injured in fall from tree

By DAN WHITE Sentinel staff writer

BOULDER CREEK — An Earth First! tree sitter was badly hurt Wednesday when she slipped from a redwood and fell to the forest floor.

Jenna Griffith, 20, was climbing the tree with at least four others around 3 a.m. when she apparently lost her footing and fell 30 feet, hitting her head on a stump.

Griffith was taken by helicopter to San Jose Medical Center, where she was listed in critical condition. About 9:30 p.m. Wednesday, the hospital reported her condition was stable.

A local Earth First! member and tree-sitter, who identified himself only as Blackbird, said, "This is the first accident of its kind I’ve experienced in four years of tree-sitting."

Blackbird, whose group was protesting Redwood Empire Inc. logging practices, said the climbers were not taking "unnecessary risks."

Griffith and Blackbird are part of a radical environmental group that is occupying a piece of Redwood Empire property three miles north of Boulder Creek off Highway 9. The group moved in Sunday, erecting platforms and tying trees together to protect them from logging.

David Van Lennep of Redwood Empire said the company was saddened to hear about Griffith’s injuries. But he said the protest was illegal because Earth First! members were on private property.

"This accident did not need to happen," Van Lennep said in a prepared statement. "The injured woman and her associates were illegally protesting a state-approved harvest for second- and third-growth trees."

Van Lennep said members from Earth First! did not participate in the public-input process offered by the state Department of Forestry and Fire Protection prior to approving the harvest.

Tuesday, the company temporarily halted some of its timber-cutting operations around the protesters, Van Lennep said.

"We wanted to make sure nobody was in danger, ... to know where everybody was and what was going on," he said.

At least one of the Boulder Creek protesters — Blackbird — participated in a tree-sit last year in the company’s Ramsey Gulch property in Corralitos.

Paul Michael Digennara, 24, and Halie Dora Johnson, 19, both of Santa Cruz and with Griffith when she fell, were arrested on suspicion of trespassing, according to Kim Allyn, Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Office spokesman.

Both have been released from custody.

At least two other protesters remained in the trees after deputies and emergency personnel left the scene.

Earth First! members said they would continue their protest indefinitely.

"No one is up there for kicks," Blackbird said. "We’re doing this out of love."

-- (Paracelsus@Pb.Au), June 14, 2001

Answers

If the company cuts a tree down legally, and a protester is sitting in the tree illegally, doesn't that eliminate the company's liability for damage done to the trespassing tree-sitter?

-- helen (un@p.c), June 14, 2001.

Seems like a strange question, helen. Unless the trees could be labeled as an "attractive nuisance", I'm pretty sure that no court would consider placing liability for the accident on the company. Nothing in the article would suggest otherwise.

You'll notice the other two protesters who accompanied the injured woman to the hospital were arrested for trespassing. The police almost certainly came to the hospital and arrested them as they stayed near their critically-injured friend - which seems a damn callous way to enforce a trespassing charge.

-- Little Nipper (canis@minor.net), June 14, 2001.


Little Nipper,

You being "pretty sure" wouldn't offer a logging company much comfort. I am confident that just the opposite would be the case. There are plenty of liberal judges in this country who would be glad to lay the blame squarely on a logging company for an injury such as helen describes, not to mention how a liberal jury in a civil case would likely rule.

As far as the rest of your post, I got a chuckle out of these words, "The police almost certainly came to the hospital and arrested them as they stayed near their critically injured friend - which seems a damn callous way to enforce a trespassing charge".

"Almost certainly"? Did it ever occur to you that maybe they were arrested when they climbed down from the tree? I would say that the two other protesters who remained in the trees after their cohort was critically injured were the ones who were being "damn callous".

-- J (Y2J@home.comm), June 14, 2001.

You are right, J, that I posted speculations, without sufficient information. I retract them.

Now, other than speculating about liberal judges, what makes you so confident that the logging company would be held liable? Do you know the applicable case law?

-- Little Nipper (canis@minor.net), June 14, 2001.


Little Nipper,

No, I can't say that I know the applicable case law. I assume that the case law reasoning would be akin to that of not being allowed to lawfully shoot someone just because he was trespassing.

I believe that the law would find that cutting down a tree while knowing that someone was in said tree would be overstepping your legal rights to the unacceptable detriment of someone else's legal rights, trespassing or not.

That is why these tree huggers do what they do. A small trespassing fine is small price to pay for the large economic loss that they are causing the logging companies that must slow their cutting.

My question would be why haven't the logging companies sued in civil court to recoup losses caused by the tree huggers? Of course, maybe they have, and I am just unaware.

-- J (Y2J@home.comm), June 14, 2001.


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