FBI to pay $2 million in Earth First suit

The federal government has quietly agreed to pay $2 million to settle a civil rights lawsuit filed by two leaders of the environmental group Earth First who were arrested and branded eco-terrorists by the FBI after they were injured when a bomb exploded in their car in Oakland 14 years ago.

The $2 million that Darryl Cherney and the estate of the late Judi Bari are expected to receive in the next few days is one of the largest settlements paid out as a result of the FBI's action, attorneys for the plaintiffs said.

"This is a huge victory for the environmental movement and the First Amendment,'' said attorney Jim Wheaton, who represented the plaintiffs in settlement talks. "I think this is the largest verdict ever against the FBI. I don't think there has ever been a settlement this large for someone who wasn't shot or killed.''

The lead U.S. Department of Justice attorney in the case, Joseph Sher, confirmed that the settlement had been approved Tuesday but declined further comment. An FBI spokeswoman in Washington, D.C., also declined to comment.

The $2 million federal settlement, and a separate $2 million settlement the Oakland City Council approved last year, will be divided between the two plaintiffs. Cherney will receive about one-third of the money; the rest will be awarded to the estate of Bari, who died of cancer in 1997.

In 1995, the FBI paid $3.1 million to the family of Vicki Weaver, who was killed three years earlier at Ruby Ridge, Idaho. The family of Black Panther Fred Hampton, killed during a FBI raid in 1969, received $1.85 million.

The settlement stems from a civil suit Bari and Cherney filed over their arrest after a pipe bomb exploded in Bari's Subaru station wagon on Park Boulevard in Oakland on May 24, 1990. Bari, who was driving, suffered a crushed pelvis, and Cherney received cuts from the blast.

The two, who were headed to a rally to mark the beginning of a campaign of protests called Redwood Summer, were arrested within hours, and their homes and vehicles were searched. Authorities then said they believed that Bari and Cherney had been carrying the bomb in her car and that it had detonated accidentally.

Prosecutors later declined to file charges against the pair, citing insufficient evidence, and no other arrests have ever been made.

Cherney and Bari later sued the FBI and Oakland police investigators, alleging false arrest, illegal search, slanderous statements and conspiracy. The suit said investigators focused on Bari and Cherney only as suspects and refused to consider the possibility they were victims chosen for their confrontational environmental activism. During the trial, an FBI explosive expert testified that the pipe bomb, placed under the driver's seat, had been fitted with a motion sensor and apparently exploded when Bari hit a bump in the road.

During the two-month trial, Sher maintained that Bari and Cherney were members of an extremist environmental group and, in his opening statements, compared them to domestic terrorists. A federal grand jury rejected that argument in June 2002 and ordered the Oakland police officers and FBI agents who investigated the bombing to pay $4.4 million to the plaintiffs.

"The bulk of the verdict was for interference with their First Amendment rights,'' Wheaton said.

Sher argued in court papers that the verdict was improper and filed a motion seeking a new trial.

The city of Oakland also agreed last year to pay the plaintiffs $2 million. But the settlement was not completed because the federal government refused to settle until Tuesday, Wheaton said.

Oakland Deputy City Attorney Maria Bee said the settlement would be paid out in four annual installments of $500,000. She said the settlement was a good deal for Oakland because the city would not have to pay for 14 years of legal fees -- an estimated $4.5 million -- owed to attorneys for Bari and Cherney under federal law.

"From our perspective, it's a good deal,'' Bee said. "The legal fees were as large as the judgment.''