“Is the aroma an obnoxious affront to neighbors or simply the ‘odor of agriculture’ that comes with life in the country?” This appears to be the theme of a case involving odors that are allegedly drifting away from an 80,000-head hog operation in Berlin, MO, and lawyers in Kansas City are preparing for the legal showdown over this issue.According to the Associated Press article published today, 15 years ago Charlie Speer started this “fight,” or what some might label a crusade, and so far the Kansas City attorney has been quite successful. For instance, since 1999 Spear has won roughly $10 million in trials against Premium Standard Farms and its affiliates. Earlier this year Mr. Speer “praised a $1.2 million settlement with an unrelated southwest Missouri operation as having ‘set the bar’ for future settlements.”
While lawsuits over what is or isn’t an agricultural nuisance are not new, they do give struggling hog producers in the “Show Me State” one more potential cause for concern. According to the AP story, Missouri has become fertile ground for such suits due to an allegedly “flawed right-to-farm legislation [that] encourages multimillion-dollar lawsuits like the ones against Premium Standard and its Virginia-based owner, Smithfield foods.”
To read an excerpt of the full AP story click here.
Bill Draper’s article for the AP contains more information in the Kansas City Star publication of the article. According to the extended article, the Kansas City Star last year obtained an internal memo from Smithfield attorneys. In the memo the attorneys “estimated the company’s exposure to litigation against Premium Standard at $150 million to $200 million.” Smithfield owns Premium Standard.
Meanwhile, Mr. Speer has been very busy filing lawsuits. According to the AP, Speer claims he has “at least 350 cases pending in Missouri against large hog operations.” Though Iowa is the largest hog producing state (“more than six times the number of hogs Missouri produces”), there are only three lawsuits on file. Mr. Speer attributes this to Iowa hog operations being smaller, family farms, whereas in Missouri he targets “corporate mega-farms.”
The Smithfield company thinks the real reason there are more suits in Missouri is because ‘“In Missouri, there is no limit to the mount a plaintiff can recover for an alleged nuisance, no matter how slight . . . The potential for an unlimited recovery for a minor injury makes Missouri extremely attractive to out-of-state plaintiffs’ lawyers looking for big paydays.”’ Still, Mr. Speer says that if the companies didn’t emit such odors from their operations in such overwhelming quantities there wouldn’t be suits. However, as long as the odors continue Speer will keep coming back.
Still, as Jean Paul Bradshaw, an attorney for Smithfield Foods puts it in the AP article, ‘“You can't raise hogs without there being a smell . . . Hogs smell. There is the odor of agriculture, and we think we probably do more than anyone else to reduce odor.”’ Bradshaw thinks the motivation for the suits is not to control the odors, but simply comes down to money. Bradshaw also argues that the ultimate victims of these suits are the farmers. Despite the continued, well documented struggles of the pork industry, one can expect that as long as there are odors there is a chance Mr. Speer is working on a lawsuit.
To read the entire AP article click here.
Meanwhile, Mr. Speer has been very busy filing lawsuits. According to the AP, Speer claims he has “at least 350 cases pending in Missouri against large hog operations.” Though Iowa is the largest hog producing state (“more than six times the number of hogs Missouri produces”), there are only three lawsuits on file. Mr. Speer attributes this to Iowa hog operations being smaller, family farms, whereas in Missouri he targets “corporate mega-farms.”
The Smithfield company thinks the real reason there are more suits in Missouri is because ‘“In Missouri, there is no limit to the mount a plaintiff can recover for an alleged nuisance, no matter how slight . . . The potential for an unlimited recovery for a minor injury makes Missouri extremely attractive to out-of-state plaintiffs’ lawyers looking for big paydays.”’ Still, Mr. Speer says that if the companies didn’t emit such odors from their operations in such overwhelming quantities there wouldn’t be suits. However, as long as the odors continue Speer will keep coming back.
Still, as Jean Paul Bradshaw, an attorney for Smithfield Foods puts it in the AP article, ‘“You can't raise hogs without there being a smell . . . Hogs smell. There is the odor of agriculture, and we think we probably do more than anyone else to reduce odor.”’ Bradshaw thinks the motivation for the suits is not to control the odors, but simply comes down to money. Bradshaw also argues that the ultimate victims of these suits are the farmers. Despite the continued, well documented struggles of the pork industry, one can expect that as long as there are odors there is a chance Mr. Speer is working on a lawsuit.
To read the entire AP article click here.
Posted: 09/23/09
