20 Feb Dicamba Verdict Adds to Bayer’s Herbicide Headaches
Dicamba Lawsuits | Bloomberg Environment | Adam Allington & Martina Barash | Feb 18, 2020
Dicamba Verdict: Federal jury slapped Bayer and BASF with $265 million in compensatory and punitive damages
Bayer and BASF’s recent legal defeat over drifting pesticides could encourage more farmers to file lawsuits, according to plaintiffs attorneys.
A federal jury slapped the companies with $265 million in compensatory and punitive damages in a case involving Bill Bader, a Missouri peach farmer who claimed that dicamba, a potent weedkiller, killed his trees when it drifted onto his property from neighboring fields.
Bader is far from the only farmer claiming that dicamba’s high volatility and tendency to drift make it an agriculture hazard. Thousands of farmers have reported crop damages since 2015, raising the specter of a ballooning legal problem for BASF and Bayer, which bought the dicamba-producing company Monsanto in 2018.
“This verdict says Monsanto has a big, big problem; they’ve hurt a lot of farmers,” said Joe Peiffer, managing partner at Peiffer Wolf Carr & Kane, a New Orleans law firm representing some 100 dicamba plaintiffs.
Dicamba Verdict sends a signal to “thousands” of other potential litigants
Peiffer said this first verdict sends a signal to “thousands” of other potential litigants.
“Bader was asking for $200 million (in punitive damages) and the jury came back with $250 million, which is a good indication they felt that what Monsanto did was particularly despicable,” Peiffer said.
Significance of the verdict
A request asking EPA to comment on the significance of the Bader verdict wasn’t returned at the time of publication. But stakeholders are waiting to see if there’s a potential regulatory solution to the dicamba question.
The EPA granted Bayer and BASF a two-year provisional registration on dicamba, which expires on Dec. 20, 2020. The temporary approval came after Monsanto in 2018 released a reformulated version of the pesticide designed to minimize drift.
Whether the Missouri verdict or future court ruling will influence the EPA’s final registration decision is unclear.
[…] Illinois, the largest soybean-producing state in the country, saw a record number of 720 complaints in 2019.
“It’s hard to make a policy decision because many of these cases are still under investigation,” Doug Owens, head of the Illinois agriculture department’s bureau of environmental programs, said in September 2019.
“But it has gotten our attention,” he added. “We’re going to have to do something because these numbers are starting to become unmanageable.”
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Dicamba Damage Lawyers at Peiffer Wolf Carr & Kane are fighting on behalf of farmers and landowners to seek maximum compensation for the damages suffered due to Dicamba Damage. If you suspect that your crops or plants have been damaged by dicamba, contact Peiffer Wolf Carr & Kane by filling out a Contact Form or by calling 314-833-4827 for a FREE Consultation.