Smith v. Shiflett

*463Hill, J.

This is another case of trespassing loggers cutting timber and seeking to avoid the statutory treble damages1 by urging that they did not know they were trespassing. It also involves the issue of the measure of damages to be paid by the mill which bought the timber from the loggers and thereby became responsible in conversion.

The purposes for which our treble damage statute was enacted are stated in Guay v. Washington Nat. Gas Co., 62 Wn.2d 473, 476, 383 P.2d 296 (1963), one of them being:

To discourage persons from carelessly or intentionally removing another’s merchantable shrubs or…