Unmarked Trucks and Poison: Inside a Billboard Company's Alleged War on Trees

(MoneyWatch)  A worker for billboard company Lamar Advertising (LAMR) has filed a whistleblower lawsuit claiming he was fired after complaining that his job was to drive around in an unmarked truck poisoning large trees that block billboards. Lamar claims it doesn't have a "policy" of poisoning trees, but it sure doesn't like them. The Tallahassee case is the most extreme in a series of incidents in which Lamar has illegally cut down trees or lobbied cities to move them.

Robert Barnhart claims his job was to drive around the Tallahassee area, park his truck several blocks away, then sneak onto private property and poison any tree that might be blocking a Lamar billboard by drilling holes in it or chopping at its roots and then pouring in pesticide. (The tree at right is allegedly one of them; it blocked a billboard for a local gym.)

Barnhart claims to have killed seven trees since 2009. The supervisor who allegedly instructed him to do this was ironically named Chris Oaks, according to the suit. Once dead, the city -- i.e. the taxpayer -- was forced to fell and remove the trees. The company told WCTV:

We do not have a policy to kill trees or remove any tree. Lamar Advertising follows city and state regulations.

That's not true, at least historically. Here is a sampling of the company's war on trees, most of which were on land it did not own:

• Connecticut: Lamar cut down 83 trees on public land along I-84, and was sued by the state for damages. The trees belonged to taxpayers and provided a noise and shade buffer to nearby residents.
• Ohio: Lamar cut down 34 trees on private land abutting a plot where it owned a billboard. The owners initially won $2.3 million in punitive damages. That was overturned and reduced after an appeals court found "that conduct was of a singular nature and not likely of repetition." Uh huh.
• Gulf Breeze, Fla.: Lamar had 85 trees planned for a highway median moved 150 feet so as to not block signs.
• Panama City Beach, Fla.: Lamar insisted it had the right to cut down several trees along Back Beach Road and authorities agreed to remove them and put them to the road median instead.

This is business at usual at Lamar. In Pittsburgh, a Lamar executive once described a municipal beautification group as a "billboard hate group" whose leader has "a personal hatred for billboards," simply because it wanted tighter regulation of billboards in the city.

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