Former Atlanta arborist settles lawsuit with city

A former Atlanta arborist who filed a whistle-blower lawsuit against the city has reached a settlement.

Under terms of the agreement, the city will pay Tom Coffin $165,000 in damages and fees, one of his attorneys, Gerry Weber, said Wednesday. Fulton County Superior Court Judge John Goger, who was to preside over the trial scheduled to begin Tuesday, also signed a consent order that allows the city to fully vest Coffin's pension rights.

Coffin, 67, was hired in 2000 and elevated to the position of senior arborist seven years later to implement Atlanta's Tree Protection Ordinance, which seeks to preserve the city's leafy neighborhoods. It allows hefty fines to be assessed against those who remove healthy trees without a permit.

In August 2008, Coffin was fired shortly after he complained that other city arborists were not rigorously enforcing the ordinance.

He alleged that other employees failed to regularly issue citations for illegal tree removal and looked the other way when developers removed healthy trees. During the first six months of 2008, Coffin noted, he issued 70 citations for illegal tree removal while the city's other five arborists combined reported 29 violations.

"I was doing my job the best I could do it," Coffin said Wednesday. "But my efforts were thwarted by the city."

Coffin, who was earning $50,700 a year, said he regrets that he will not return to his former job, because he feels he could help rebuild the city's arborist division. Coffin is now an officer of The Tree Next Door, a neighborhood organization devoted to protecting Atlanta's trees.

The settlement awaits approval by the city council and Mayor Kasim Reed.

In a statement, the city's law department said it felt it was "prudent to resolve the matter at this stage rather than continuing with the costs and uncertainty of litigation. The agreement includes a provision that the city is not conceding liability, but is merely compromising a disputed claim."