I am writing this article for two main reasons:
I want ranchers to know there is help out there when they find themselves in these grave situations.
Many things Western Justice does are not talked about publicly for one reason or another, whether because of a confidentiality agreement or because the owners don’t want it to be public.
To an extent, the 2018 Watson Creek Fire incident with the J-Spear Ranch near Paisley, Oregon fell under both of those reasons for a period of time.
I’ll start off by saying that Western Justice put the “A” team together to mount a defense to save J-Spear Ranch from a lawsuit totaling around $35,000,000. But there is some “bad” with the “good” news in this situation and that is the most important part of the story.
In 2020, I got a call from J-Spear Ranch Manager, Joe Villagrana, about a lawsuit the USDA filed against J-Spear, claiming that their hired man was responsible for starting the Watson Creek fire while working on a fence line on their Forest Service permit ground.
Their hired man was indeed up in the area, had been near where the fire started the day before, and was working at least a half-mile from that location the next day. It was a High-Risk Dry Lightning Day. He was back at the trailer eating lunch because of the stormy weather when he noticed smoke above the trees. He jumped on his four-wheeler and went to investigate. The spotty cell service on the mountain made it difficult, but he finally was able to alert Joe, who very quickly mobilized and drove the half-hour up the mountain.
At this point, the fire was very small and the hired man tried to dig a fire line around it, but he had to cross a fence to do so because the fire was on the neighbor’s allotment, not J-Spear’s. As luck would have it, he took several pictures with his cell phone, which later helped prove our case. Members of the local fire crew arrived to help. They unloaded a T1 dozer, but they knew they needed Forest Service approval to do anything. By the time the Forest Service got there, the fire was still just 3-5 acres and manageable.
Now the Bad
When the Forest Service arrived, they denied the crew the ability to work on the fire, because although the State and the BLM had longstanding agreements with the local fire crew, the Forest Service had refused to sign an agreement for several years.
The Forest Service crew stood around for an hour or two and didn’t even get a shovel out. They left the fire and came back around 11 a.m. the next morning. This was a prime example of the unwritten and unlawful rule that the Forest Service uses of “let it burn, but try to keep it from rolling over homes or towns.”
Consequently, because of the feckless and unlawful actions of the Forest Service, the Watson Creek Fire eventually burned up 55,000 total acres of state, federal, and private ground. The Forest Service then sent in an investigator to find the cause of the fire. This was due to a request from Green Diamond Timber Co. who owned private ground that was affected. It was his very first forest fire investigation. I am certain that the government researched the two entities with grazing permits on either side of the fence near where the fire started, and found that one had lots of resources and the other didn’t, and chose the more lucrative target.
This first-time investigator determined very quickly that J-Spear’s hired man’s four-wheeler had started the fire. It was highly unlikely, nearing impossible, that this was the true cause, given the terrain, lack of fuel along the fence line, and the improbable way he claimed that the fire started.
Western Justice’s “A” Team
After Joe called me, I asked our Chief Council and Board Member, Gary Baise, to fly out from D.C. He is considered by many, myself included, to be the top agriculture attorney in the U.S. We reviewed the area where the fire started two years before, and quickly assembled a team with the best forest fire investigator in the country, the top two meteorologists in the west coast, and a forensic arborist. Using the pictures the hired man had taken, we knew the general area where the fire had really started. Many landmarks were still there to show us exactly where and from what angle to look. Our investigator did his due diligence and started marking all the fire patterns and directions, several hours later he wound up right back where the pictures showed the fire at its start.
Our fire investigator found a typical and obvious lightning strike on a tree in that exact area, and the forensic arborist determined it had only been dead for two to three years. This particular tree was 30 yards from the fence line, and on the neighbor’s allotment, nowhere near where the State’s first-time investigator claimed the starting point to be. With countless hours of investigative work, multiple trips to the site, going over weather reports, Strike Net logs, and meetings with our experts, we learned that the storm that started this fire produced lightning strikes from Alturas, California, all the way to Boise, Idaho. We had done our due diligence. We knew we were ready to go to mediation.
Now We Mediate with the DOJ Attorney
The Forest Service DOJ Attorney, Carla McClurg, was bound and determined to persecute the J-Spear Ranch. With our panel of experts in the room at the mediation hearing, we proved that the Watson Creek Fire was started by a lightning strike which had not shown up on Strike Net because of the patchy cell service in the area. To further back this up, we also had an expert show that Strike Net had never recorded a strike on this ridgeline, even though there were multiple previous strikes known by locals. With all this proof, common sense and decency would suggest that the DOJ Attorney would have said, “Sorry, J-Spear for putting you through this, and costing you attorney fees and expert fees. We are going to declare this a lightning strike and walk away”.
But, because the DOJ knows the insurance companies will settle, she simply said, “We believe our investigator is correct; we will see you in court.” Since there was no limit to the money she could spend; because it would mean she was wrong in chasing this if she gave up; because attorneys like her consider bilking insurance companies and good Americans for money to be a badge of honor, she bowed up and said, “I want a fight.”
The owners of J-Spear had a lot to weigh: do we spend another $250k fighting this? Is it worth another two years or more of our lives fighting? Or do we walk away without having to pay any more out of pocket and let the insurance company settle? Liberty Mutual was not going to fight, even though we had proof of being in the right. Liberty fired the first attorney we were working with because he was a good man, knew we were in the right, and wanted to fight. The second attorney was toeing the line.
All in all, Liberty settled for its limits, which was $6 million. J-Spear was not liable for anymore. Nevertheless, J-Spear’s reputation was on the line because a lot of locals thought they had started the fire. They didn’t start it but could have easily had it controlled in a few acres. Instead, our federal government let it burn up 55,000 acres. This is what the Forest Service calls a “Fire Management” plan. Instead of doing the work and cleaning up low-level fuels, they simply let it burn.
Western Justice is here for exactly these kinds of situations. We have the experience, the know-how, and the connections to act swiftly and effectively, but we need your support to help us stop this kind of corruption and abuse of good, law-abiding Americans.
J-Spear had the resources to be able to at least prove the DOJ wrong, but most ranchers do not. Western Justice is putting together a legal fund to financially assist ranchers, so they can fight back. The great folks at the Pacific Legal Foundation and the Rocky Mountain Legal Foundation do this work once it hits the Circuit Court and SCOTUS level.
The stressful and expensive process of getting cases to that point is what generally scares people away from fighting or it breaks them financially. Western Justice is here to change that, to make sure that all ranchers can fight the legal battles they need to fight.
Donations to the legal fund can be made to the Western Justice 501(c)(3) and are tax deductible. Please just state on your donation that you wish it to go into the legal fund. Thank you for your help.
Sincerely,
Dave Duquette
Western Justice Legislative Fund Founder & Executive Director
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