October 28, 2005
Environmental Justice
Danny Westneat tells the story of Judge Jerome Farris of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, who sounds like a real piece of work -- he cut down a bunch of trees from a city park in order to improve the view from his house, failed to pay the lion's share of the $500,000 restitution he agreed to pay the city, and also tried to blame his gardener for the misconduct.
Quiz Question: Was this wealthy, tree-killing, poor-immigrant-blaming, consequence-shirking judge appointed to the bench by Ronald Reagan or by Jimmy Carter?
Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at October 28, 2005
09:05 AM | Email This
1. It is an outrage to make him pay 500,000.00 for the trees he had chopped down. The punishment needs to fit the crime. He needs to replace each and every one of them with a tree the same exact size..... or the city should build a huge apt building right in HIS view, totally blocking his view!
2. That is about $10,000 a tree. That doesn't seem that much. There will be city workers digging out the stump, purchasing the large trees and planting them. Along with some minimal penalty it doesn't seem that bad.
The arrogance of doing it in the first place is bad, but keeps in line with all 9th circuit decisions
3. I remember when this happened. The city authorities assured us all that even though he broke the law by cutting down the trees (the rest of us who wanted to cut any trees on our OWN property had to pay for expensive permits and give site maps indicating the work that would be done, provide an arborist's report, and receive permission from the city), he WAS fined half a million. In fact, they almost seemed apologetic for him. The city has been a wienie about the whole thing, as though they didn't want to come down too hard on him because he was a liberal judge.
4. Didn't Mr. StarbucksMan, Howard Schultz, do something very similiar a number of years ago in Medina or Mercer Island?????
Interesting Danny-boy didn't dredge up that old story....but Danny wouldn't want to offend a fellow Lefty now, would he.
As I recall, Schultz paid some fine and/or restitution....but it was peanuts compared to the value of the view.
I'll try to find it.
5. Let them eat cake!
6. Cynical,
As I recall, Schultz built a driveway across public land, a park I believe it was, without first getting an easement. I doubt the impact was severe, but the principle is huge. Local bajillionaires must be held to a high standard.
7. This Judge insisted in doing this he should pay Plenty fo $ for this stupidity!!
8. What else would one expect from a US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals member?
9. ok--waive the fine; forget the trees; my sentence? a PermaTent City where the trees were felled;
everybody wins--judge puts community service on his resume; tent city folks get primo view property; judge walks the liberal talk; citizens see judge acting "just like me;" liberal press gets a feel-good story; judge's neighbors get to live with his decisions and not foisting them on the rest of us; judge's community learns about diversity; judge delcares his treeless area a 'sensitive' CAO site and expels tent city on environ grounds;