Already under fire for siphoning money into a secret fund, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire) has been ordered to pay more than $32 million in legal bills for those it blamed for starting a 65,000-acre forest fire.
In a scathing order, Superior Court Judge Leslie C. Nichols, sitting on assignment in Plumas County, accused the agency of covering up, lying and engaging in “egregious and reprehensible conduct.”
“The court finds that Cal Fire’s actions initiating, maintaining and prosecuting this action, to the present time, is corrupt and tainted,” the judge wrote.
The sanctions appear to be the largest ever awarded for discovery abuse, according to the forest products company Sierra Pacific Industries, one of the defendants and the largest private property owner in California.
The judge, in an order filed Tuesday, also blasted the attorney general’s office, which represented Cal Fire. “The sense of disappointment and distress conveyed by the court is so palpable, because it recalls no instance in experience over 47 years as an advocate and as a judge in which the conduct of the attorney general so thoroughly departed from the high standard it represents,” he wrote.
From the Los Angeles Times: https://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-0206-cal-fire-sanctions-20140207,0,4475962.story#ixzz2seWdWJ3G