Ex-Pacific Lumber chief must face fraud trial
Financier Charles Hurwitz, who took over Pacific Lumber Co. in 1986 and touched off a storm of protest with his tree-cutting practices, must go to trial in a lawsuit filed by a former state forestry director accusing him of defrauding the federal government into paying $250 million for the pristine Headwaters Forest, a federal judge has ruled.
The case, scheduled for trial April 20 in Oakland, centers on the company’s sale in 1999 of the 3,000-acre Humboldt County forest, the nation’s largest privately owned old-growth redwood grove. In a deal brokered by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., Pacific Lumber also promised to follow stringent logging practices and preserve the habitat of endangered creatures on its remaining 210,000 acres of timberland in Northern California.
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