Three New Brunswick timber companies are seeking to have their forestry lands excluded from the Wolastoqey Nation’s Indigenous title claim that’s working its way through the courts. J.D. Irving, H.J. Crabbe and Sons, and Acadian Timber say the land they harvest and privately own should be excluded from the claim because a lower court last year removed them as defendants in the lawsuit, filed by the First Nation. Lawyer Paul Steep, counsel for JDI, said his client has the right to respond in a case that puts the company’s land at risk. So either JDI is restored as a defendant with standing, he said, or JDI land is no longer targeted by the claim. …The Wolastoqey say they never surrendered their traditional territory. Last November, Justice Kathryn Gregory ruled that landowners can’t be directly sued for the return of land. She placed the issue squarely between the Wolastoqey and the Crown and dismissed the “industrial defendants.”