Posted on 05/21/2018 6:31:37 PM PDT by SMGFan
. A judge has ordered a teen who admitted to starting a fire that swept through the Columbia River Gorge last year to pay over $36 million but acknowledges the teen can't pay the sum in full.
Hood River County Circuit Judge John A. Olson wrote in an opinion released Monday that the court awards restitution totaling about $36,618,330 on behalf of Eagle Creek fire victims including the U.S. Forest Service and Oregon Department of Transportation. Olson also tapped the local juvenile department to come up with a payment schedule for the restitution.
(Excerpt) Read more at oregonlive.com ...
Oregon has raise minimum wage to $36,000,000/hour as a result of this teen’s dilemma in order to provide everyone a living wage. He’ll be fine.
A hamburger in Oregon will now cost $173,427.97 + tax.
What if I want cheese on it ?
I think this case brings up an interesting judicial dilemma.
How would you (meaning all readers of this thread) settle this case ?
The teen is responsible for starting the fire however the Dept of the Interior / US Forest Service is responsible for the severity of the consequences.
The DOI has restricted logging and stopped the old sequence of planned controlled burns that used to keep the amount of dry fuel in the forest under control.
Now after years of piled up pine needles pine cones and dead falls accumulated in the national forest and surrounding private lands any fire quickly gets out of control.
The kid may have started the fire but what happened afterward was just waiting to happen and would have happened eventually. If it wasn’t human caused a lightning strike would have started it soon enough.
Give the kid a 5 the year probation and 8 hours a week public service and call it a day.
“How would you (meaning all readers of this thread) settle this case ?”
We would need to read some much more detailed accounts of this matter before we could hope to even begin to think about it.
On the face of it it seems quite ridiculous to level a judgment of this magnitude on a person in this situation. I question what effect this award will have on other efforts to make those with losses whole after this fire. I have to assume entities like a railroad are insured for such losses, because otherwise I guess us taxpayers are on the hook.
And, we know nothing about the mind set of the defendant at the time, it’s not clear from the article if his actions were foolish, malign, or otherwise.
“Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.”
I’m not a lawyer, but I think it could be argued it’s excessive, in that the kid could never pay it off. Seems a tad unusual.
“Wildfires.”
Hillary use to steal that much in a day
Put the kid on a payment plan and then negotiate a settlement ten years from now.
Make him wash police cars every Saturday for a month.
Given the way the Federal government is printing money he might be making this much when he is 30.
“The DOI has restricted logging and stopped the old sequence of planned controlled burns that used to keep the amount of dry fuel in the forest under control.
Now after years of piled up pine needles pine cones and dead falls accumulated in the national forest and surrounding private lands any fire quickly gets out of control.”
Can’t be repeated enough.
Change that to Fire Engines and 5 years and maybe we have a deal.
the worse in my family was my brother starting a fire to burn some ants out and set the telephone pole on fire, and the fire trucks had to come...
community hrs is fine...garnishing a few dollars a week for 10 yrs okay...
but for the next 10 yrs, which is what he'll probably have to pay for, he'll make next to nothing so the govt will just ensure that he'll be poor, depressed, despondent.
there are no right answers...
if this was an 88 yro who threw his smoke out accidentally, it would be called a "medical issue" or early onset of dementia...
but the young....we just got to severely punish the young...
The US Forest Service calls it ‘Forest Management’.
Forest mis-Management is closer to the truth.
we’ve driven there recently and one can’t really see the damage....its rainy in that area and everything grows pretty quickly...
The U.S. Foresf Service is part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) not Interior.
They both have their hands in this pie.
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