Florida might pay homeowners for loss of citrus trees
Legions of healthy trees fell victim to failed canker fight.
TALLAHASSEE — Florida may drop a long-running legal battle and instead agree to pay millions to homeowners across the state whose healthy citrus trees were torn down in a failed attempt to eradicate citrus canker.
House Republicans have agreed to spend $66 million to end lawsuits filed on behalf of homeowners in Broward, Lee and Palm Beach counties. There are also lawsuits filed in both Orange and Miami-Dade counties that could eventually push up the cost even more.
Rep. Carl os Tr uj i l l o, a House budget chairman, defended making the payments now because lower courts have already ruled against the state in several counties. The House has included the money in its proposed $81.2 billion budget.
“We should pay a judgment that has been levied against us,” Trujillo said. “Just kicking the can down the road for the next legislature is probably not the best idea.”
The House move to pay off the lawsuits now runs counter to a suggestion from Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam.
Putnam said in a statement this week that “for the sake of fairness” he has maintained that the state should not pay anything until the court cases reach the state Supreme Court, adding the “courts have ordered wildly different amounts of com- pensation to the homeowners.” Since 2011 Putnam’s office has spent at least $3.17 million with private attorneys to defend the state in the litigation.
T h e S e n a t e — whi c h i s working on a rival budget — so far has not agreed to go along with the payment.
Canker is a bacterial disease that blemishes a tree’s f r ui t a nd c a n c ause i t t o drop prematurely, although fruit that ripens can still be squeezed for juice. After a 53-year lull, canker reappeared in Florida in 1986 and was spread by the wind.
A last- ditch attempt to protect Florida’s $9 billion dollar citrus industry from wi d e s p r e a d c o n t a mi n a - tion began in 2000, as the state ordered the destruction of even healthy citrus trees within 1,900 feet of an infected tree with or without the owner’s permission. More than 16 million trees were destroyed statewide during the six-year program, including 865,000 residential trees, before a series of hurricanes spread canker too widely to be eradicated.
For compensation, the state gave each homeowner a $100 Wal-Mart gift card for the first tree killed and $55 cash for each subsequent tree, but thousands compl a i ned t hei r t re e s were worth much more.
Class-action lawsuits were f i l e d a nd c our t s a g re e d. Judges ordered homeowners in Broward, Lee, Orange and Palm Beach counties to be fully compensated. Those r ul i ngs t ot a l a bout $ 1 00 million and a Miami-Dade County case that remains open could double that. Part of the judgments include payments to the law firms that filed the lawsuits.