Source: https://treeandneighborlawblog.com/author/tlr4353/page/2/
Timestamp: 2019-04-26 15:52:41+00:00

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Posted on April 12, 2019 by treelawyer	tagged.
A Yankee landowner ­– we’ll call him El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Juan Roberto Hamilton de la Vermancha – was furious at the Holland Town select board when it announced plans to widen the road in front of his house. He complained to the Town, and it scaled back the plans. That wasn’t good enough for our hero: He sued.
The case went to the Supreme Court of Vermont twice, where our landowner proved his point. The Court held that the Holland Town tree warden couldn’t cut down the trees in front of Don Hamilton’s house without holding a hearing first.
A tree warden is a concept unique to New England, a municipal official given powers by statute to make decisions about the cutting and trimming of diseased or hazard trees. The tree warden’s powers are defined by statute.
For Don Hamilton’s considerable efforts in protecting the due process rights of all landowners who might have the tree warden try to cut down healthy trees without a prior hearing, the plaintiff was rewarded with damages … of one dollar.
Of course, Don Juan Roberto Hamilton used two lawyers and spent about $30,000 in pursuit of his glorious quest, and for reasons you can read about in the full case, he didn’t win any attorneys’ fees. But he has his dollar, and the sense of satisfaction that he stepped up and made a difference.
Hamilton v. Town of Holland, 950 A.2d 1183, 2007 VT 133 (Sup.Ct. Vt., 2007). John Robert Hamilton owned property on Lackey Road. In 2001, the Town select board decided to widen a half-mile section of Lackey Road because the section was not wide enough to allow large vehicles – such as a truck, snowplow or school bus – to pass each other safely. The Town engaged the assistance of the State District/Regional Highway Commission in selecting and marking the trees that needed to be removed for the road project.
As originally planned, the road-widening project required removal of many trees, and would have required blasting, digging drainage ditches, and installing culverts. John objected to the tree-cutting proposal. The select board voted to go ahead with the project anyway, but it scaled back the road and reduced the number of trees to be cut.
John sued for a declaratory and injunctive relief, seeking to prevent the Town from cutting down the trees. He argued that the Town must follow the statutory procedures for altering a public highway, including performing a survey of the road, before proceeding with the widening project. The Town argued that it had authority to maintain Lackey Road, and that widening the road is part of the Town’s maintenance responsibility. The Town also argued that the Town’s tree warden was not required to hold a hearing before removing the trees, because they were a hazard to the public. The trial court granted summary judgment for the Town, and John appealed.
The Vermont Supreme Court reversed the decision, holding that the record did not support the court’s grant of summary judgment, because while the trial court had grounded its decision in part on the fact that the trees to be cut were all located within the right-of-way for Lackey Road, and that all of the work would take place within that right-of-way, the location of the right-of-way and the trees to be cut was an issue of fact that was not resolved. The Supreme Court also agreed with the landowner that state law on tree wardens did not grant the tree warden authority to cut public shade trees under the “public hazard” exception unless the trees themselves presented the public safety hazard.
On remand, John amended his complaint, raising a 42 U.S.C. §1983 claim of deprivation of his constitutional right to due process. The due process claim was based on the failure of the tree warden to hold a hearing prior to removing the trees in question. He also claimed trespass and conversion of trees, both of which claims were grounded in state law. The trial court concluded that the road project was “more extensive than routine maintenance,” but that fact alone did not constitute “a major alteration to the road as that term is defined in state law.” Therefore, the court held, the project did not trigger the requirements of 19 V.S.A. §704 for a survey.
The trial court also concluded that the tree warden’s failure to hold a hearing on the proposed cuttings violated 24 V.S.A. §2509, but that John wasn’t injured by the violation. The court awarded nominal damages in the amount of $1.00 for his §1983 claim, and — because of these nominal damages, John was the prevailing party under federal law and entitled to attorney’s fees. The Town appealed, and landowner cross-appealed.
John Hamilton only won a dollar – but what a nice dollar it must have been!
Held: The trial court’s determination that the widening was not a major alteration was upheld. According to the statute, “ ‘[a]ltered’ means a major physical change in the highway such as a change in width from a single lane to two lanes.” If the change constituted an alteration, then the Town was required to comply with 19 V.S.A. §704, which required expensive studies of project before it was undertaken.
The project involved cutting fifteen trees in front of John’s property, a total of thirty to thirty-nine trees along the entire length of the road, and regarding and adding gravel. John argued that the original project was much more extensive, but the Court said that the Town’s response to his original complaint — to scale back the project — was an appropriate response, and the statute had to be applied to what was finally done, not what was originally planned. The Court observed that the project did not widen Lackey Road from one lane to two, but rather all of the work was done within the existing right-of-way. No culverts were installed or blasting done. Ditches were improved and gravel spread, which appeared to be maintenance under state law. Trees were removed, but such removal is specifically contemplated as a matter of maintenance by 19 V.S.A. §904. The Court agreed with the Town that all the work it performed qualified as maintenance under state law. As such, the Town did not need to perform the survey requirements found in §704.
John had spent $2,000 planting new trees, but he admitted the new planting took place in an area different from where the Town proposed to cut trees and was completed before any cutting by the Town. The Court thus found that John’s plantings were not related to the roadwork.
Inasmuch as John did prove a deprivation of due process and a violation of his property rights in the removal of trees located in the Town’s adjacent right-of-way, the superior court was correct to award him nominal damages of $1.00. Because the Town cut down the trees without holding a tree-warden hearing, the Court said, John’s due-process rights were violated regardless of his inability to prove loss or damage.
Posted on April 11, 2019 by treelawyer	tagged.
There was a time that the expression “don’t make a federal case of it” actually had meaning, when only the serious stuff – liking stopping mobsters with tax evasion cases and busting big trusts – became a federal offense. No more.
Now, the feds go after people about 60,000 times a year for any of over 4,000 different criminal offenses, a number that does not even include federal rules that themselves have been criminalized, like the one in today’s case.
Today’s example is a textbook case. Roy P. Hinkson is a 69-year-old Purple Heart recipient who never faced any criminal charges in his life. That changed on November 15, 2014, when the U.S. Forest Service charged Roy with the misdemeanor crime of building a camp on National Forest System land without a permit, in violation of 36 CFR § 261.10(a), a misdemeanor punishable by a $500.00 fine and six months in jail.
It used to be easy. You’d don a mask and a gun, rob a bank, and make off with the loot. You enjoyed the thrill of knowing you had been really, really bad. Roy missed out on that.
A number of commentators – including Alex Kozinski, a judge on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals (until he was driven off by political correctness run amok) – have complained about the overcriminalization of America. With so many thousands of statutes, and thousands more rules that have been criminalized, just about everyone can commit three felonies a day without breaking a sweat.
Roy found out just how much living a clean life got him, and how little his government appreciated his taking a bullet in Vietnam.
United States v. Hinkson, 2017 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 90409, 2017 WL 2544195 (W.D.Mich. June 13, 2017). Roy Hinkson owned a small hunting cabin, which was built in the 1950s by Al Repp. By mistake, Al had built the camp about 200 feet or so across the line in Hiawatha National Forest rather than on the 40 acres of land that Al owned. Roy’s parents had no ownership interest in the land or the cabin, but they were family friends. In fact, when Roy returned from the Vietnam War, he used the cabin for deer hunting.
In 1976, a fire destroyed the original hunting cabin. A lot of folks, including Roy and at least U.S. Forest Service worker helped clean up the mess. During the clean-up, a few of the USFS people asked Al to rebuild it about 25 feet east of the original site, just to be sure the cabin was on private property. Al was an accommodating fellow, so when he rebuilt the place two years later, he did as the Forest Service people asked.
That’s where things stood for 46 years. The owner passed on, and Roy inherited the cabin. Roy enjoyed occasional use of the camp when he hunted. To get to it, he used an access road, also on USFS land, that was blocked by a locked gate. Roy provided a key to the Forest Service, which kept it on a key rack at the Manistique Ranger District office.
In 2014, a Forest Officer playing with Google Earth on his computer noticed Roy’s cabin appeared to be on National Forest System land. A week later, he investigated the cabin with a GPS tracker, confirming it was on USFS land.
Instead of notifying Roy by leaving a note or sending a letter, the Forest Service – as militarized as any other federal agency – set up a sting-like operation for the opening day of deer hunting season. Despite the utter foolishness of raiding a camp full of men armed with high-power rifles, officers from USFS and the Michigan Department of Natural Resources swarmed the deer hunting blinds on the first day of hunting season and arrested the hunters, fortunately without incident.
The USFS officer leading the raid said the hunters had committed at least 30 different violations. However, he only issued three tickets – Roy was issued two, and his son was issued a third for having a permanent deer blind on federal property. One of Roy’s tickets charged him with “Camp Constructed on NFSL: in violation of 36 CFR § 261.10(a). The next day, Roy removed most of the temporary structures, but the cabin remained.
Held: When Roy appeared in court, the magistrate judge dismissed the charges. The government said all it had to do was prove beyond a reasonable doubt that (1) Roy constructed, placed, or maintained the camp, (2) the camp was located on National Forest System lands, and (3) there was no special-use authorization, contract, or approved operating plan if such authorization was required. Roy on the other hand, argued that the court had to imply a mens rea requirement in the regulation.
The traditional rule is that proof of a guilty mind, the mens rea, is required to convict a person of a crime. The Supreme Court has said that offenses requiring no mens rea generally are disfavored, and has “suggested that some indication of congressional intent, express or implied, is required to dispense with mens rea as an element of a crime.” However, the courts have found statutes or regulations do not require a mens rea element when they are considered public welfare offenses.
Here, the court said, the charges are not a public welfare offense. The offense at issue here differs substantially from “public welfare offenses” previously recognized. “In most previous instances, Congress has rendered criminal a type of conduct that a reasonable person should know is subject to stringent public regulation and may seriously threaten the community’s health or safety.” Nothing puts a reasonable person on notice that having a cabin on national forest land does the same.
What’s more, the court said, even statutes creating public welfare offenses generally require proof that the defendant had knowledge of sufficient facts to alert him to the probability of regulation of his potentially dangerous conduct.

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