Telling Your Story
Last fall, we looked at what was emerging from North Carolina as one of the largest and costliest lawsuits against production agriculture as it began playing out in court.
Lawsuit. The word alone sends chills up the spine of any agriculturalist, even if all the I's have been dotted and T's crossed in every detailed documentation of everything that went on in every corner of the farm for the last two decades.
To recap, Dallas attorney Michael Kaeske brought 10 federal lawsuits against Murphy-Brown Farms and contract growers. The first three cases were heard in Raleigh, N.C., far removed from the farms. Expert testimony on odor, dust, water quality, best management practices, etc. were not allowed in the trials. The plaintiffs (and their Texas attorney) were awarded small fortunes. The farms will not be able to repopulate once the last load of hogs leaves the farm, because the farms have been labeled as a nuisance.
Now on the fifth case and near a halfway point, it's a good time to revisit what has happened in the meantime.
Trial number four had something of a better result, at least in terms of sending a message that plaintiffs are not about to get rich, at least not during this judge's trial. The trial was moved away from Raleigh. The attorney became bolder in asking for even more dollars than previous trials, but the judge capped award amounts and the jury was not allowed to consider additional punitive damage payments. The neighbors who lived closest to the farm and for the longest amount of time were awarded $75,000 each. The ones who lived farthest got OK'd for one hundred bucks. However, the ruling was still in favor of the plaintiff, and there is no remediation; in other words, no roadmap to fix or change problems, real or perceived.
The fifth trial, now in progress, is back in Raleigh. It is against one of the farms named in the first set of trials. However, it brings a different set of plaintiffs. Defense attorneys are trying to expand more on rural and farming lifestyle, claiming the lawsuits are attacks against such.
The first three trials worked under a gag order, but a passionate ruling by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the order in some strong language, agreeing that hog farms by nature are a messy business, resulting in odor, insects, noise and dirt as a result of producing food, jobs and livelihoods.
Appeals will take more time but will certainly happen before any money exchanges hands. We can only hope that in the appeal process, judges and jurors realize that this series of lawsuits is about someone getting rich at the expense of livestock producers, a rural community and the rural way of life.
Follow the cases at North Carolina Pork Council's blog, https://www.ncpork.org/category/beyond-bacon-the-blog/.
Bev Berens is a freelance writer and FFA parent from Holland, Mich. She can be contacted at uphillfarm494@yahoo.com.