Prosecution Is 1st of Its Kind in L.A. : 2 Charged for Felling 4 Old Chatsworth Oaks

In the first case of its kind in Los Angeles, the city attorney’s office Thursday filed misdemeanor charges against two San Fernando Valley men for bulldozing four oak trees in Chatsworth on April 16 without the required city permit.

Jack Sinder, 62, and Robert Switzer, 54, were ordered to appear for arraignment May 23 in Los Angeles Municipal Court on the first charges ever brought for violation of the city’s 5-year-old oak tree protection law. The law requires a city permit for removal of larger oak trees.

Partnerships Owns Property

Sinder is general partner of Encino-based Flynn Road-Camarillo Partnership Ltd., which owns property at 21810 Lassen St., where the oaks were destroyed. Switzer is a Chatsworth demolition contractor whose company was hired to clear the site for a commercial development.

Each man could receive up to six months in jail and a fine of $1,000--increased from $500 by voters’ approval of an April 9 city ballot measure--for each oak removed without a permit, according to Ted Goldstein of the city attorney’s office.

“I was hired by somebody else to do it,” Switzer said Thursday. “I didn’t know there was an ordinance against cutting down oak trees.”

No ‘Historical’ Plaques

Switzer also said there were no “historical landmark” plaques on the trees, as city officials contend. Sinder could not be reached for comment.

Goldstein said his office also will seek to make the defendants pay for the ruined trees. To set a value on the trees, he said, the city attorney’s office will consult the International Society of Arboriculture.

A spokesman for the society said the organization has provided experts in other cases who, in court testimony, have placed values of up to $40,000 on a single tree. Appraisals, the spokesman said, are based on a variety of factors, including a tree’s age, condition and history.

“You have to consider that when . . . Indians were assisting in building the San Fernando Mission, those trees were out there in Chatsworth,” Goldstein said. “We would like the judge to take this into consideration.”

The Oak Tree Coalition, a Valley-based environmental group, has catalogued the oaks destroyed last month as part of a grove that was the site of an 1800s stagecoach stop, and earlier, an Indian encampment.

Goldstein said the city attorney’s office was angered by reports that the defendants continued working at the site, chopping the felled trees into firewood, after they had been ordered by city inspectors to stop.

“They showed no concern for what they were doing,” Goldstein said.