Landowners who live in forests around Eureka have sued Humboldt County, alleging officials in the far northern California region accused them of illegally growing marijuana without sufficient evidence, triggering potentially millions of dollars in fines and limiting their ability to improve their properties.
Corrine and Doug Thomas, Blu Graham, Rhonda Olson and Cyro Glad originally filed their putative class complaint in October, then lodged an amended filing Jan. 20. In addition to the county, named defendants include the Board of Supervisors and its five members, and the Planning and Building Department and Director John Ford.
The case is pending in federal court in Eureka.
“Humboldt County fines landowners hundreds of thousands of dollars for things they never did because it files charges without regard for probable cause,” the landowners alleged. “The accused then rarely ever get the chance to defend themselves because the county withholds hearings from those who fight the baseless charges against them. While the county makes accused landowners wait indefinitely for an administrative hearing, fines continue to accumulate and the county denies them permits they need to develop their property. The only way out is to pay the county, one way or another.”
The complaint asserts the county designed its code-enforcement policy after the state legalized recreational marijuana. By creating an abatement program, the county can cite landowners for nuisances or for violating permitting rules and, if the county alleges a connection to improper marijuana cultivation, “the daily fines automatically jump from a few hundred dollars to between $6,000 and $10,000 per violation, regardless of whether the violations pose any harm to the community.”
Primary evidence the county uses to write citations, according to the complaint, are satellite images of “harmless things like greenhouses” with no probable cause or further investigation. That can generate a $10,000 fine for the greenhouse, another $10,000 fine for unpermitted marijuana cultivation and a $10,000 daily fine alleging the landowner built the greenhouse after grading without a permit.
The plaintiffs further said the county won’t issue permits to anyone facing an abatement order, which means daily fines accrue as “accused landowners wait several years and pay up to $4,500 for a hearing.” When a hearing does happen, the county hires a law firm to resolve disputes, which the plaintiffs also allege is improper.
Humboldt County has about 54,000 households, the complaint alleged, and for decades “has attracted off-the-grid homesteaders, hippies and other counterculture and anti-government types” while local government allowed a “culture of unpermitted development to grow unabated.” They characterized the 4,052-square-mile county as “economically depressed,” with 16% of residents living in poverty. The plaintiffs said 80% of the county is forest, recreation areas and protected redwoods and alleged the county only got serious about code enforcement once the state legalized marijuana.
According to the Thomases, someone grew marijuana at their property two years before they were they owners. They nonetheless face more than $1 million in fines, an order to destroy a three-story workshop and thousands of dollars in administrative fees. Olson also alleged a prior owner of her land grew marijuana, but she faces $7 million in fines herself, while also being denied a permit to develop the land for more than two years.
Graham alleges the county assessed $900,000 in fines based on satellite photos of a greenhouse where he grew vegetables for his restaurant. He said he waited four and a half years for a hearing, and while he was working on the class complaint it quickly scheduled the hearing and offered to drop its claims if he paid $3,747 in administrative fees and waived his right to the hearing.
Glad said he faces $900,000 in fines related to marijuana on land he just bought and alleged the county never visited his property, nor has it scheduled the hearing he requested in November 2018.
The plaintiffs seek certification of a class including anyone facing similar cannabis-related zoning violations levied after Jan. 1, 2018, and who have not been granted a hearing on their appeal. They also want a declaration the county’s policies and fines violate their rights under the Seventh, Eighth and 14th Amendments, and that the county violates the Constitution by denying land-use permits to people facing abatement orders and injunctions preventing the county from continuing such conduct. In addition to nominal damages, Graham seeks $795 in restitution for the administrative fees he paid for charges the county dropped after four years.
The Institute for Justice is representing plaintiffs in the matter, with attorneys Jared McClain and Joshua House, of Arlington, Va., and Robert Johnson, of Shaker Heights, Ohio, along with the San Francisco and Sacramento offices of Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman.