Tens of thousands of people whose healthy fruit trees were chopped down in an ultimately failed state effort to control citrus canker deserve more than cheap replacement saplings, an attorney for Broward County homeowners told jurors Friday.``This case has been about, since day one, the Constitution,'' said attorney Bobby Gilbert. ``They are entitled to full compensation when the government takes their private property for a public purpose.''
More than 58,000 Broward County residents are seeking damages from the state as part of the class-action lawsuit. The outcome of the case could have an impact on similar pending lawsuits in Miami-Dade, Palm Beach, Lee and Orange counties -- potentially involving millions of state dollars.
Gilbert said the homeowners deserve ``full replacement cost'' for the identical orange, lemon, lime or other citrus trees that were destroyed -- not the $55 to $100 offered by the state. Many larger or exotic trees were worth $2,000 or more apiece.``This case is not about getting a small citrus tree to replace a big citrus tree,'' Gilbert said. Jurors were offered several formulas to arrive at a value, ranging from a per-foot price _ such as $750 for 8-foot trees and $80 a foot above that _ or aggregate per-tree amounts. Total cost estimates ranged from $26.7 million to more than $80 million.
``It's a big number because they cut down a lot of trees,'' Gilbert said.
Attorneys for the state Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services were to give their closing arguments later Friday. Jurors are scheduled to begin deliberations Monday.
Canker causes blemishes on fruit and can make it drop prematurely, but it does not kill infected trees and ripe fruit can still be eaten or juiced. The disease is spread by wind, birds and humans.
The decade-long, $1 billion program to eradicate canker destroyed about 16.5 million residential, nursery and commercial trees, including more than 800,000 from the yards of homeowners. About 133,700 of those were in Broward yards.
Even if they were healthy, trees were destroyed if they were within 1,900 feet of an infected tree. Circuit Judge Ronald Rothschild had previously found the state had no rational basis for the 1,900-foot rule, which was instituted in January 2000.
The overall eradication program ended in 2006 when officials decided that hurricanes had spread canker too far to contain it.
A judge in Palm Beach County has also ruled the residential trees had value and that owners deserved compensation. A jury is expected to take up the value issue later this year.
