Logging company accused of timber theft in civil suit

Two Kootenai County men and an associated logging company are accused of stealing timber valued at more than $60,000 on land they did not own south of Post Falls.

Richard J. Abbey and Dean Votava, and a Coeur d’Alene logging company called Dean Votava Logging Land and Timber, are being sued in First District Court for logging and building roads on 55 acres of land at Blossom Mountain west of Coeur d’Alene.

The lawsuit against the logging company and two defendants was filed this month by three landowners including Marian Crumb of Hayden; Brian and Frankie Crumb, of Post Falls; and the Hauser-based Bremer Family Land Trust. According to court records, Votava and his company filed phony paperwork with the Idaho Department of Lands notifying the state of the company’s intention to harvest timber and build roads on the land that overlooked Newman and Hauser lakes and the Spokane River Valley. The phony paperwork filed in October 2014 said the land belonged to Abbey.

Beginning a month later, the company allegedly removed timber valued at $61,011 from the 55-acre property during logging and road building on four parcels, selling the wood at local mills. The logging was discovered by the landowners the following spring, and the state conducted an investigation.

The estimated timber value was determined by a stump cruise of the land — in which foresters use the stumps left over after logging to determine the value of the timber harvested. The state also determined that reforestation on the cutover property would cost a total of $15,775 and cleaning up the slash would cost $26,500, according to court records.

The landowners are asking to be reimbursed those costs in addition to an unspecified amount of damages that will be determined by the court, according to the civil suit filed by Coeur d’Alene attorney Darrin L. Murphey, who represents the plaintiffs.

Because the defendants are alleged to have trespassed and illegally harvested and sold someone else’s timber, state law allows a court to award triple damages to the defendants, according to court records, “plus a reasonable attorney’s fee.”

According to court records the landowners intended to use the property as “a recreational sanctuary and vacation property, with the thick mature forest serving as a primary aesthetic trait of the property.”

The value of the property for its intended use was diminished by the “defendant’s malicious and outrageous conduct and complete disregard of plaintiff’s property rights,” according to the lawsuit.