Tag: Moonlight Fire

The Moonlight Fire made plenty of news in 2007 as it burned 65,000 acres of U.S. Forest Service and state protected lands in Northern California (map).  But since then it has hit the headlines many times with various episodes of a series of scandals that have rocked the wildland fire and judicial systems. In the latest installment the U.S. Supreme court has been asked to hear a case related to the fire.

An investigation conducted by the USFS and the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CAL FIRE) determined that sparks from a dozer working on land owned by Sierra Pacific Industries (SPI), a timber company in California, started the fire. There is a report that an employee in a lookout tower had left to make a one hour round trip to get a soda when the fire started. Upon his return the fire was well established. At another time, someone visiting that tower smelled marijuana and observed the employee peeing on his feet. The explanation for the latter was to treat athlete’s feet.

Based on the results of the investigation, the Department of Justice through the United States Attorney’s Office extracted a $55 million settlement from SPI and a requirement that the company hand over 22,500 acres of land. But SPI has always denied any responsibility for the fire.

As the case wound through the courts both sides (CAL FIRE/USFS/U.S. Attorney vs. SPI) accused the other of unethical conduct, including destroying or withholding evidence.

In 2009 a CAL FIRE investigator asked that a portion of the settlement, $7.7 million, be paid with a separate check  so that it could be deposited into an unusual off-the-regular-books non-government account. The WiFiter account used shortcut methods to procure items outside of the conventional appropriations and procurement system. Previously funds in the account had been used for off the books purchases of items such as 600 digital cameras and 26 evidence sheds.

Below are excerpts from a March 30 article in the Washington Post by Kathleen Parker:

…Next came the state case, where evidence of misconduct was so overwhelming that the judge threw out the case, calling the joint investigation and prosecution “corrupt and tainted” and saying that it “threatened the integrity of the judicial process.” He concluded that petitioners could not “ever have received . . . a fair trial,” and awarded SPI $32 million in compensatory sanctions — the largest sanction against a government body in U.S. history.

The Moonlight Fire case is sufficiently fascinating as a multifaceted drama, but it is certainly more than that. Ten state attorneys general have filed an amicus brief urging the Supreme Court to accept the case. Yet, even an outrageous case of prosecutorial misconduct isn’t enough to get the Supreme Court’s review.

This week a book was published about this bizarre saga, “Scorched Worth: A True Story of Destruction, Deceit, and Government Corruption”.

(To read all 10 of the articles we have written about the Moonlight Fire, click HERE.)

Thanks and a tip of the hat go out to Tim.
Typos or errors, report them HERE.

The barbs, counter-charges, and accusations of “unethical conduct as a lawyer” continue to fly from both sides like burning embers lofted by a wildfire, about the 2007 Moonlight Fire that burned 65,000 acres (map), including 46,000 acres in the Plumas and Lassen National Forests in northern California.

CAL FIRE and the U.S. Forest Service claimed a bulldozer operated by Sierra Pacific Industries was responsible for starting the fire. Three years ago the company agreed to pay $100 million to settle the case, but in the last several months they have sought to reverse the deal because of alleged misdeeds by investigators and prosecutors.

Below are excerpts from an article in the Sacramento Bee:

Federal prosecutors in Sacramento have launched a blistering new attack on Sierra Pacific Industries and its lawyers, accusing the timber giant of “deception” and “scandal mongering” in its efforts to reverse a $100 million settlement it agreed to pay over the 2007 Moonlight fire, which burned huge swaths of the Plumas and Lassen national forests.cases.
[…]
“The government contends Sierra Pacific’s efforts to overturn the settlement “lack integrity” and are based on false accusations, and that the company “only pretended to settle” the lawsuit it faced. “This is professional misconduct of the worst kind,” the government brief states.

Among the claims made by Sierra Pacific are allegations that a veteran assistant U.S. attorney, E. Robert Wright, was forced out of his lead role in the case after he refused to “engage in unethical conduct as a lawyer.” Wright filed a declaration for Sierra Pacific in which he said he was removed from the case and replaced by a prosecutor with no previous experience in wildland fire cases.
[…]
“They try to create the impression that Wright is a celebrated veteran of the U.S. Attorney’s office, who received nothing but praise for his work,” the government’s brief states. “But in fact, his work was of mediocre quality and it was for this reason the Moonlight fire case was assigned to another attorney at the pleading stage, before discovery commenced.”
“My comment is simply that we have officials who are supposed to be diligently and honestly representing the U.S. government who are actually lying in papers they are filing with the court, and making up stuff five years after the fact,” Wright said.

Articles on Wildfire Today tagged Moonlight Fire.

Attorneys from the U.S. Department of Justice have asked for the lawyers representing Sierra Pacific to be removed from the case about the responsibility for the Moonlight Fire, alleging unlawful and unethical tactics. CAL FIRE and the U.S. Forest Service claimed the company was responsible for starting the fire that burned about 65,000 acres in 2007 (map), including 46,000 acres in the Plumas and Lassen National Forests in the northern part of the state.

Below is an excerpt from an opinion article in the New York Observer:

EXCLUSIVE: Those who dared expose government corruption in the Moonlight Fire case have just been met with a furious motion to disqualify all counsel and everyone who has even read the affidavit of former Assistant United States Attorney E. Robert Wright.

David Shelledy, Civil Division Chief for the United States Attorney’s Office in the Eastern District of California and new counsel to the case, Matthew Segal, have moved to disqualify all of the defense attorneys for Sierra Pacific and related defendants in the now infamous “Moonlight Fire” case. Ironically, Mr. Shelledy himself is the one who should be disqualified—from representing the government—if not disbarred. Mr. Shelledy is squarely implicated in the unethical and possibly criminal government misconduct he seeks to hide.

The Department of Justice through the United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of California extracted a $55 Million settlement from Sierra Pacific following a massive civil prosecution blaming the timber company for a wildfire that destroyed thousands of acres of forest land. The agreement also required Sierra Pacific to give the government 22,500 acres of land.

Sierra Pacific, which has always maintained it did not start the fire, was complying with the federal settlement while also dealing with litigation against it in the California state courts. In the state case, California Judge Leslie Nichols entered a blistering order in February, awarding $32 million in attorneys’ fees to Sierra Pacific and imposed the ultimate sanction—termination of the case. He found that the state agency, Cal Fire, “withheld some documents, destroyed other evidence and ‘engaged in a systematic campaign of misdirection with the purpose of recovering money’ from Sierra Pacific.”

Judge Nichols’ fiery order caught the attention of former Assistant United States Attorney E. Robert Wright, who felt compelled to come forward. Turns out that Mr. Wright had been the lead Assistant United States Attorney and filed the case against Sierra Pacific—until his superior, Civil Division head David Shelledy removed him from the case after they had a dispute about a clear ethical rule that requires the government to disclose evidence adverse to the government’s case to the defense attorneys in another fire case…

Other articles about the latest developments in the Moonlight Fire litigation:

• Fox News: Why every American should care about California’s Moonlight fire case
• Sacramento Bee (Nov. 18, and Nov. 24)

Since January, 2013 a battle has been going on in the court system between the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, the U.S. Forest Service, and Sierra Pacific Industries Inc., a Redding, California lumber company. CAL FIRE and the U.S. Forest Service claimed the company was responsible for starting the Moonlight Fire that burned about 65,000 acres in 2007 (map), including 46,000 acres in the Plumas and Lassen National Forests in the northern part of the state.

Below is a portion of an update from the Wall Street Journal:

A California timber company accused of starting a 102-square-mile wildfire seven years ago is seeking to undo a $47 million legal settlement because of alleged misdeeds by investigators and prosecutors.

Sierra Pacific Industries filed hundreds of pages of court documents Thursday in federal court seeking to reopen a case settled in 2012. The settlement also included Sierra Pacific transferring 22,500 acres of land to the state of California.

State and federal prosecutors and investigators concluded that the state’s largest timber company was responsible for a 2007 wildfire that consumed 40,000 acres of national forest in Northern California, as well as another 25,000 acres.

A state court judge in February found that California officials lied and hid evidence, and the judge ordered the state to pay the company $30 million. The company is citing the same evidence to reopen the federal case.

The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection is appealing the state judge’s decision…

An article in the Modesto Bee includes some shocking charges.

…On Thursday, [Sierra Pacific] took the rare step of asking [Judge Kimberly] Mueller to “vacate the settlement” due to “fraud upon the court.”

Sierra Pacific has already paid the government $29 million under the terms of the settlement, with another $3 million payment due Jan. 1. It also has conveyed approximately 1,500 acres of its property to the government, owing roughly 21,000 more acres.

The company contends federal prosecutors sat by in pretrial depositions and knowingly allowed the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection and U.S. Forest Service investigators to “repeatedly lie under oath about the very foundation of their investigation.”

It insists in its motion that the investigators’ origin-and-cause report is a fraudulent document that omits or distorts all information that might have hurt the government’s case.

CAL FIRE was also involved in questionable behavior before the case first went to trial. In their billing sent to Sierra Pacific in 2009, they demanded the company make two payments; one of $7.7 million to the state, and another for $400,000 to an account belonging to a nonprofit organization administered by CAL FIRE. The organization that held the money charged CAL FIRE 18 percent interest. The funds in that account had been used for off the books purchases of items such as 600 digital cameras and 26 evidence sheds. In Sierra Pacific’s investigation into CAL FIRE’s demand for payment, they discovered the very unusual account, named “Wildland Fire Investigation Training and Equipment Fund”, sometimes referred to as “WiFiter”.

That account, as we wrote in January of 2013, was not exactly secret, however it was not commonly known that it was an off-the-books account not subject to the standard state regulations for managing and spending money. We found a memo from former CAL FIRE Director Walters, apparently written in 2009, summarizing the year’s fire season in which he mentioned the account:

Office of Program Accountability (OPA) finalized three audits (Volcan Incident, Wildland Fire Investigation Training and Equipment Fund, and Indirect Cost PCA 99200)…

The current Director of CAL FIRE, Ken Pemlott froze the fund in August, 2012 after, according to the LA Times, “receiving a briefing from his staff, said Janet Upton, a Cal Fire spokeswoman”.