Recently, this blog posted an article over the latest poultry litter litigation filed in Maryland against Perdue Farms and a Perdue contract grower. Click here, to see that blog posting. The Washington Post reported on Sunday that the Maryland Senate is not happy that the University of Maryland’s environmental law clinic provided pro bono work for the environmental group bringing the suit. To view the article by David A. Fahrenthold of the Washington Post, click here.
According to Mr. Fahrenthold, the state senate recently passed legislation that could force the clinic to lose $250,000 in funding. The language that passed the senate would require the legal clinic to turn over a list who it represented in the past two years and show how it spent its money. Language that passed the state house appropriations committee would withhold $500,000 from the law school, unless a similar report was submitted.
Some see this as a threat to the clinic’s academic freedom. “Rena Steinzor, a law professor at Maryland and former director of the environmental law clinic, said the legislation was an attempt to bully the clinic. "It's not acceptable, because it is an effort to chill and intimidate us for taking cases that cause trouble in Annapolis." But one state senator, Brian E. Frosh pointed out, “If you guys are getting involved in issues that we don't like, or you're bothering people that we do like, we want you to shut up."
Others such as state senator J. Lowell Stolzfus see the free legal work of the clinic as a way to overwhelm small chicken farms, who in return have to pay for legal representation. Perdue Farms also see this as one of the biggest threats to agriculture in the past 50 years.
For more on this story, click here to view an article in the Baltimore Sun by Annie Linskey and Timothy B. Wheeler.
In other news, the poultry farm, in question here, was fined $4000 by the Maryland Department of the Environment for improperly dumping sewage near a drainage ditch. Click here to view the article in the Baltimore Sun by Timothy B. Wheeler
In other news, the poultry farm, in question here, was fined $4000 by the Maryland Department of the Environment for improperly dumping sewage near a drainage ditch. Click here to view the article in the Baltimore Sun by Timothy B. Wheeler
Posted: 3/29/10
