Logging error saddles elderly Idaho man with legal bills; ‘It is a tragedy,’ justice says

When Kenneth Eyer decided to log part of his Sagle property to raise money for his wife’s chemotherapy bills, he never dreamed he’d end up owing more than $100,000 in legal fees.

“I made $6,500 on the logging,” said Eyer, 87, whose wife, Sally, died in January. “I’m destroyed – I’m financially destroyed over somebody else’s little mistake.”

The Idaho Supreme Court on Monday ordered Eyer to pay more than $95,000 in attorney fees for an unsuccessful counter-lawsuit over the 2009 logging job. That’s on top of the more than $37,000 he’s paid his own attorney, and a $50,000 settlement he signed with his neighbor.

Between legal costs, long delays and the intricacies of Idaho laws on “timber trespass” – 19 trees on a neighbor’s property were inadvertently cut down in the logging job – the outcome, according to the chief justice of the Idaho Supreme Court, was legally correct, but “most unfortunate for the Eyers.”

Read more: http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2016/sep/12/logging-error-saddles-elderly-idaho-man-with-legal/