About

Bjørn Terje Smistad has worked at Statskog, a state-owned enterprise responsible for the management of state-owned forest and mountain real estate, for the past 10 years. Terje Smistad is an expert barrister, and believes that it is fundamental for internal lawyers to have the knowledge and understanding of how the court will assess the merits of a case. ‘During my 10 years in Statskog I have recruited one barrister and had five associates of which three today are barristers and two are nearly qualified barristers’. He assists Statskog’s divisions and management with legal advice and litigates various cases. ‘Our ambition is to work integrated with Statskog’s business areas. We take cases to court and prepare to go all the way to Supreme Court’. He also focuses on strengthening relations to other specialists within their field such as other legal departments (within other land and forest owners in Norway and Sweden), organisations, law firms and universities. He has actively participated in changing the level of compensation for landowners in cases of expropriation of waterfalls for development of hydropower and determined what level of compensation should apply. ‘Our participation in this process has been litigating the first case in Norway where the district court accepted this method to calculate compensation’. Terje Smistad successfully assisted other landowners, in which two took their case to Supreme Court, in 2008 and 2011. ‘We also have litigated other cases concerning landowner issues in conjunction with development of both hydropower and wind power. Compensation is due to this new method increased with up to a 100 times preceding level’. Terje Smistad also negotiated compensation for expropriation of forest for Norwegian nature reserves. The state was the counterparty in these cases, adding an extra layer of complexity. Over 300,000 acres have been affected, and compensation reached approximately NOK 300 million. ‘This winter I assisted the board of directors writing a report to the owner of Statskog SF, the agriculture Minister, concerning privatisation of ownership to the national forests. As project leader I had a challenging job, coordinating 11 subprojects and putting the deliveries together in a consistent report’. His personal career highlight is being admitted as a barrister to the Supreme Court and to participate in discussions with parties in several cases, for the Supreme Court and later the case before The European Court of Human Rights, in June 2012, between Lindheim and others v Norway concerning The Ground Lease Act. ‘I find it interesting and motivating to work with current issues, and to have almost the whole country as a workspace’.