"Pacific Lumber Company is trying - unsuccessfully so far - to make an environmental group retract a negative advertisement about the company and its owner." The ad was actually about the Headwaters Bill; a bill intended to wrest the 44,000 acre Headwaters forest complex from the private ownership of Maxxam before it is logged. The ad explained how Maxxam, under the directorship of its owner, Charles Hurwitz, might log the remaining ancient redwoods on its lands at a rapid rate in order to pay off hundreds of millions in junk bond debts acquired during Maxxam's hostile takeover PALCO.
"The Trees Foundation, based in Redway, placed an ad in the Santa Rosa Press Democrat in September that included statements that Maxxam owner Charles Hurwitz - who took over Pacific Lumber eight years ago - intends to cut his timber holdings in a few years, then leave the county. It also linked him to junk bond king and convicted felon Michael Milken . . ."
"The purpose of the ads was to promote Congressman Dan Hamburg's controversial attempts to get the government to buy 5,500 acres of PALCO's Humboldt County forest land that includes the ancient redwoods in the so-called Headwaters Forest." Of the roughly two million acres of original redwood forest, only about four percent of that now remains unlogged. Little of that four percent remains in virgin condition. Environmentalists believe that preserving the ancient Headwaters grove is critical if functioning remnants of the redwood ecosystem are to remain on the planet.
"PALCO owns the Headwaters Forest." The Headwaters forest has been identified as the largest unprotected grove of virgin redwoods in the world.
"In a letter dated Sept. 23, Maxxam attorney Anthony Pierno demanded the Trees Foundation buy another ad to retract statements in the September ad. The letter called the ad 'outrageous and defamatory' and threatened legal action if a correction was not printed."
". . . Trees attorney Karl Olson sent a letter back to Pierno Oct. 29 refusing the demand."
" 'We felt that it was an attempt on their part to stop the Trees Foundation from exercising its right to free speech. Nothing in the ad was actionable legally,' Olson said Friday."
". . . Olson noted this is not the only time Maxxam has threatened to sue people who criticize the company."
"Doug Thron, a Humboldt County activist who has been traveling around the country showing before and after slides of Maxxam's timberlands, has been told to destroy his slides - allegedly taken illegally - or he will be sued." Thron, in a personal communication to MEC staff, said, "I'll die before I give up my pictures!"
". . . Olson concluded his letter saying the Trees Foundation would countersue if Maxxam proceeded with a lawsuit."
"He told Pierno if PALCO wanted an ad to address its grievances against Trees to buy it itself."
" 'We may not agree with what you say, but we will respect your right to say it. Neither we nor the courts, however, will tolerate the use or threat of a lawsuit as a means to chill the Trees Foundation's right to free speech,' Olson wrote."
Copyright Mendocino Environmental Center 1998
Permission granted to excerpt or use this article if source is cited