21 Feb For dicamba lawsuits, Bader verdict is just the beginning

Dicamba Lawsuits | Investigate Midwest | Jonathan Hettinger | Feb 20, 2020

Dicamba Lawsuits: $265 million verdict is just the beginning of a new legal battle between

The $265 million verdict issued last week against German agribusiness giants Bayer and BASF is just the beginning of a new legal battle between the companies and thousands of farmers.

Since 2017, Monsanto and BASF officials have denied that its new dicamba weed killers are prone to moving off the genetically modified soybean and cotton fields where they are sprayed and onto neighboring fields, despite complaints from farmers, feedback from pesticide applicators, studies from university academics and the finding of state regulators.

Last week, a federal jury rejected the companies’ argument, siding with a Missouri peach farmer who alleged that his orchard is going out of business because it has been continuously harmed by both Bayer, which bought Monsanto in 2018, and BASF’s dicamba-based herbicides. The jury awarded plaintiff Bader Farms $15 million in actual damages and $250 million in punitive damages.

[…]

Dicamba is a weed killer that has traditionally been limited in use because of its propensity to drift and harm crops. But in 2017, Monsanto and BASF released new formulations of dicamba designed to be sprayed over new genetically modified soybean and cotton crops and touted to be less volatile.

The companies face at least 130 lawsuits over dicamba. Many of those seek to be class-action lawsuits that would represent the thousands of farmers – largely growers of non-resistant soybeans but also specialty crop farmers – whose fields have allegedly been damaged.

U.S. District Court Judge Stephen Limbaugh Jr., who presided over the Bader case, is overseeing the pre-trial process for those cases, which have been combined into multi-district litigation in the Eastern District of Missouri in Cape Girardeau, Mo. Under that setup, lawyers representing the farmers form an executive committee and work together on preparing the case, including taking depositions and filing document requests.

Lawyers are now looking at the Bader Farms case, which showed that Monsanto officials knew they would get thousands of drift complaints and limited testing of the herbicide with regulators paying attention to drift, as an indication of things to come.

“The road map has been laid for plaintiffs on how to win this,” said Paul Lesko, an attorney at Peiffer Wolf Carr & Kane, which is representing 27 clients in the multidistrict litigation.

Dicamba Lawsuits: more than 700 dicamba complaints in 2019

Illinois, the nation’s top soybean producing state, had fewer than 100 total drift complaints annually for all pesticides for 30 years. Since then, dicamba has set new records each year – with more than 700 dicamba complaints in 2019.

Bayer, meanwhile, has been receiving fewer drift-related inquiries, the company said. Bayer stands by its dicamba products, which are extremely popular among some farmers for their effectiveness at killing glyphosate-resistant weeds.

[…]

Bayer believes the case should not continue as a class action because each individual case has different circumstances, Hohn, Bayer’s lawyer, said.

“You have to go to each individual field,” he said. “When you do that, as you actually go visit the field, you can find any number of different circumstances.”

Lesko, the plaintiffs’ attorney, disagreed. He said that all the cases, no matter the crop, have one thing in common: dicamba.

Aaron Hager, an associate professor of weed science at the University of Illinois, said the science points to the fact that dicamba is moving off-target and harming crops, no matter what Bayer says.

“They can’t defend this,” Hager said.

FREE Consultation |  314-833-4827

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.