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Gold Hill widow might be off hook By CHRIS BRISTOL SALEM -- A Gold Hill woman won't have to pay a $55,000 bill for the cost of putting out a fire that started when her husband was electrocuted in a logging accident, the Oregon Department of Forestry has announced. Forestry spokeswoman Cary Greenwood said Department of Justice investigators confirmed last week that Lowrider Reforestation -- the logging company owned by Dawn Spilka's late husband, Brian Spilka -- carried more than $2 million in liability insurance. Greenwood said the state will now go after the insurer, Seattle-based Sullivan and Curtis Insurance Brokers. Such was the state's intention all along, she added. "She shouldn't have to worry about it," Greenwood said. "There's an insurance company that has the legal responsibility ... and our expectation is certainly that she has no liability here." The state sued Spilka last month, touching off a torrent of criticism when the Mail Tribune reported it. Radio talk hosts in Portland slammed the forestry department for suing a widow, and an editorial in the Statesman Journal newspaper in Salem accused the state of "adding insult to tragedy." In a brief interview by phone Monday, Spilka repeated her belief that the fire was not her fault and that her husband's business insurance, if he had any, should have to foot the bill. She plans to meet with her attorney in Medford today to discuss the situation. "I'm sure they're gonna get their money," she said of the state, "but it ain't coming out of me. They're not taking my land." Brian Spilka, 45, was killed almost instantly in the Aug. 23 accident, which occurred when he or an employee cut down a tree that hit a power line. He was working under contract for Boise Cascade, on private property near Lost Creek Lake. Two employees were also hurt in the accident. The accident also set off a small brush fire -- Greenwood said it charred six acres -- which firefighters from the Department of Forestry quickly contained. Greenwood said that the forestry official who billed Spilka's modest estate for the fire always believed that the logger's company had liability insurance, as required of private contractors by state law. The lawsuit was mainly a formality because the case was in probate, she added. "He assumed that her husband's business had insurance, because that would be normal practice," Greenwood said. However, she conceded, "We had no way of knowing at that point" whether he did or didn't. Greenwood also reiterated the agency's position that state law requires the government to recover costs associated with human-caused fires that threaten public wildlands. The policy dates back more than 40 years. "We are obligated by law ... to pursue these kinds of claims," she said. "It's just a fact of law that we have to." Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 2000, Medford, Oregon USA