A husband-and-wife-owned forestry company is accused of duping an elderly New Jersey man into signing a bogus contract and then decimating his family’s 321 acres of forestland along the Pacific Coast near Bandon, according to a federal lawsuit.
More than 260 acres were cut by Pro Forestry Consulting and its subcontractors, allowing the company to sell about 2 million board feet of logs for about $1.7 million in revenue, the suit alleges.
Of that, the family landowners received “absolutely nothing,” attorney Michael E. Haglund wrote in the suit, filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Eugene.
The suit alleges financial elder abuse, timber trespass, negligence and fraud by Pro Forestry Consulting, its owners Craig and Patricia Richards and subcontractors.
It seeks $15.9 million in damages, equal to triple the estimated $5.3 million in damages for monetary losses and pain-and-suffering claims.
“This case is a tragic illustration of why Oregon needs to establish a board to license and regulate professional foresters,” Haglund wrote in the suit.
Craig Richards of Pro Forestry Consulting did not return phone messages seeking comment, nor did a lawyer who represented the company in a similar civil suit in state court with another plaintiff.
New Jersey resident Edwin A. Yoder owned two-thirds of the forestland near Bandon but lacked the capacity to read or understand the contract that Craig Richards insisted Yoder sign in December 2022, according to the suit.
The contract designated Pro Forestry Consulting as Yoder’s representative for all purposes involving a timber harvest, the suit says.
Yoder’s father had purchased the Oregon land as an investment, Haglund said.
Craig Richards then drafted contracts with different loggers that lacked any signature from Yoder and directed all log proceeds to be paid to Pro Forestry Consulting, the suit says. Richards’ company then failed to pay multiple contractors, the suit alleges.
After Yoder died at age 97 on May 8, 2023, Craig Richards then pressured Yoder’s 66-year-old daughter to pay Pro Forestry Consulting’s creditors more than $35,000 as the personal representative of her father’s estate, the suit alleges.
The suit, filed by Edwin Yoder’s estate, his two daughters and two grandsons, also accuses the subcontractors of ignoring multiple “red flags” and failing to verify the ownership of the property while they cut more than 80% of the Yoder family acreage.
Among the subcontractors named as defendants in the suit are: T & K Foglio Inc., Four Mile Logging Inc. Grant Creek Logging, Inc. and Northwest Hardwoods Inc.
In some cases, the suit contends, loggers unnecessarily “mowed down” young timber to reach “a few large merchantable trees,” and their actions caused infestation of the flammable gorse, an invasive weed.
“The tragic facts of what actually happened over more than two years demonstrates that these defendants had absolutely no regard for the mess that the Yoder family would be left with,” the suit alleges. “As a result, the future for timber production on the Yoder family’s 321.26 acres is both bleak and expensive.”
Once Yoder’s surviving relatives began to question why neither Yoder nor his estate received money from the timber sale, Pro Forestry Consulting provided “incomplete” and inaccurate information “in formats that no landowner without significant knowledge of how logs are accounted for from the woods to the mill would be able to understand,” Haglund wrote in the suit.
A nephew of one of Yoder’s daughters got involved and asked to inspect the land last month but Richards put two locks in place to block his entry, the suit alleges.
The nephew, though, is a retired auto mechanic and came prepared with his tools, using a metal-cutting saw to cut through a link in a chain at the gate and then put his own locks on the property, according to the suit.
Craig Richards sent Yoder’s daughter an email last Friday complaining and arguing that his company’s contracts were solely with Edwin Yoder, the suit says.
The suit alleges Pro Forestry Consulting has engaged in a similar pattern, citing a separate civil malpractice and negligence suit filed by a doctor against the company in Curry County in 2023. Pro Forestry Consulting and a logger paid $109,910 to settle the claims related to a timber harvest and road widening on approximately 30 acres of forestland in Langlois, according to the suit.
— Maxine Bernstein covers federal court and criminal justice. Reach her at 503-221-8212, mbernstein@oregonian.com, follow her on X @maxoregonian, on Bluesky @maxbernstein.bsky.social or on LinkedIn.
