WEST PALM BEACH, Fla., Nov. 28, 2011 /PRNewswire/ --A Florida court has rejected an attempt by Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam and the Florida Department of Agriculture to block recovery on a judgment awarding over $19 million in compensation to thousands of Palm Beach County homeowners whose healthy, uninfected citrus trees were destroyed under the failed citrus canker eradication program. Palm Beach County Circuit Judge Robin L. Rosenberg entered the order last week following a March trial where a jury determined the amount of compensation owed to the homeowners. The state argued that the homeowners are required to petition the legislature for a special appropriation to pay the judgment. Judge Rosenberg disagreed with the state, concluding that the statute is inapplicable where the state took the homeowners' private property for a public purpose.
Homeowners' lead counsel Robert C. "Bobby" Gilbert of Grossman Roth, P.A. commented: "We are gratified by the Court's recent order. It is further validation of the principles we have fought for over the past decade. The continued efforts of Commissioner Putnam and the Department of Agriculture to trample on the constitutional rights of hundreds of thousands of Florida homeowners is yet another example of politicians and government bureaucrats acting as if they are above the rule of law and ourstate constitution. It's time to hold them accountable, and for the state to pay the homeowners the amount of compensation determined in the courts."
In 2010, Florida's Fourth District Court of Appeal found "no merit" to the state's arguments that it is not liable to pay compensation to homeowners whose healthy citrus trees were destroyed under the failed eradication program, and held that "[c]utting down and destroying healthy non-commercial trees of private citizens could hardly be more definitively a taking. Government has regulatory power for the very purpose of safeguarding the rights of citizens, not for destroying them. Under any possible meaning, if government cuts down and burns private property having value, then government has taken it. And if government has taken it, government must pay for it. . . . By requiring the State to abide by its constitutional obligation to compensate individual homeowners, we safeguard the property rights of all."
Between 2000 and early 2006, the state destroyed over 600,000 healthy, uninfected residential citrus trees under the eradication program. The state abandoned the program in 2006 when the U.S. Department of Agriculture concluded that eradication of citrus canker was not feasible.
Contact
Robert C. Gilbert, Esq.
305-442-8666 office
305-987-7583 cell
SOURCEGrossman Roth, P.A
