Atty., wife sue OE for $10M over white pines

By Peter H. Milliken

Power line easements allow tree-cutting, the utility company says.

YOUNGSTOWN — A lawyer and his wife have sued Ohio Edison for more than $25,000 in compensatory damages and more than $10 million in punitive damages, alleging the utility sneaked onto their property and cut down white pine trees without their permission.

Atty. Raymond M. DeLost, and his wife, Maria, filed the civil lawsuit Monday in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court, naming the electric utility and its tree-cutter, Penn Line Service Inc. of Scottdale, Pa., as defendants.

The utility has an easement for a high-voltage transmission line that crosses the DeLost’s two-thirds-acre home site on Lakeshore Drive in Struthers.

The couple said they planted the trees in 1986 to ensure their privacy and enhance the value of their property. “These trees intersected and have always been compatible with defendant’s transmission easement,” the lawsuit said.

The DeLosts obtained a temporary restraining order against Ohio Edison from common pleas court in 2006, which the 7th District Court of Appeals reinstated in 2007, saying the trees posed no threat to the transmission line.

Last month, the appellate court ruled that the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio, and not the county common pleas court, would decide the fate of the trees.

Since the 7th District decision contradicted an 8th District Court of Appeals decision, the matter of jurisdiction was to be decided by the Ohio Supreme Court.

The utility and its tree-cutter then trespassed onto the DeLost’s property on July 1, cutting down these and other trees, leaving behind the stumps and devaluing the property by leaving it in an unsightly condition, the suit says.

“With callous disregard for the repeated orders of the plaintiffs and the City of Struthers safety service director [Edward Wilds] to leave plaintiff’s property, defendants continued to cut down plaintiff’s trees,” the suit said.

“We do this type of vegetation management work as part of our ongoing efforts to provide safe and reliable service to our customers,” said Mark Durbin, senior public relations representative for First Energy in Akron, of which Ohio Edison is a part.

“If there are trees under the lines, those trees need to come out,” he said, adding that the company’s easements allow it to perform this work.

“We’ll be prepared to make our case in court,” Durbin concluded.

DeLost also filed an amended complaint Monday in Columbiana County Common Pleas Court on behalf of Wayne Wilson of Lisbon, whose 39 blue spruce trees planted in the mid-1980s were cut down along an Ohio Edison transmission line easement on his property.

In that case, the county common pleas court denied Wilson’s motion for a preliminary injunction, but ordered the utility “to exercise forbearance” with regard to cutting down the trees until the case would come to trial in March 2009.

With disdain for the court’s order, the utility and its tree-cutter trespassed on Wilson’s property on U.S. Route 30 and cut down his trees Feb. 6, leaving behind the stumps and making the property unsightly and devalued, the suit said.

That suit seeks the same amounts of damages for Wilson as the DeLosts are seeking at their Struthers residence. Both suits demand a jury trial.