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Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Environment - "Lawyers target pig, dairy farms: Attorneys seek justice for neighbors allegedly injured by pork and dairy producers"
A very interesting, and lengthy, story today from Seth Slabaugh of the Muncie Star-Press, featuring Indianapolis attorney Rich Hailey. Some quotes:
WINCHESTER -- Neighbors who are fed up living next door to factory farms have found three high-powered trial lawyers who vow to make Randolph County "ground zero" in a courtroom food fight over how Indiana produces pork and milk. * * *It would be interesting to take a look at some of these lawsuits.The trial lawyers are bringing multiple lawsuits challenging Indiana's industrial or factory model of producing milk and pork in concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) promoted by Gov. Mitch Daniels' agriculture department. * * *
"There is a lot of discontent," said Indianapolis attorney Rich Hailey, a former president of the Association of Trial Lawyers of America, now known as the American Association for Justice (AAJ). "We anticipate the potential filing of a dozen more cases in a short period of time."
The defendants include Vreba Hoff Dairy, an Ohio-based firm that has brought large Dutch dairy farms to Indiana, Ohio and Michigan; Maxwell Foods/Maxwell Farms, a leading, North Carolina-based pork producer that has been expanding into Indiana; Harrisburg, Pa.-based pork producer Country View Family Farms, and various local operators. Most of the cases are being filed in Randolph County, though one is being filed in federal court in Indianapolis.
Hailey specializes in assisting law firms nationwide as local or co-counsel. In this case, his firm is assisting Richard Middleton, another former president of AAJ from Savannah, Ga., and Kansas City attorney Charles Speers, who has won nuisance judgments against large livestock farms in other states.
Middleton said environmental attorney Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the president of Waterkeeper Alliance, encouraged him to get involved in the fight against factory farms, which are "a tremendous insult to the environment and to the neighbors." * * *
Livestock agriculture contributes more than $2.5 billion in cash receipts to the Indiana economy each year.
But one of the downsides is that livestock agriculture can be a nuisance to neighbors.
The Maxwell and Vreba Hoff facilities named in the lawsuits each produce millions of gallons of manure, urine, afterbirth and other hazardous substances annually. The substances are stored in deep pits below the hog barns and in a lagoon adjacent to the dairy barn.
The manure is eventually land applied to farm fields as fertilizer, which the lawsuits say spreads the odor far beyond the farms.
The lawsuits also complain of leakage and spillage of manure onto neighbors'' properties, as well as the composting of dead animals in piles, causing more foul odors.
One of the hog farms has spilled manure on public roads, causing plaintiff Jette Dungan's car "to become fouled with hog waste as she drove through it at night," one lawsuit alleges.
The defendants allegedly did not acquire sufficient land on which to spread their manure and allegedly designed and constructed manure management systems that exacerbate rather than reduce odors.
The lawsuits also claim the defendants failed to take steps to reduce their foul and noxious-smelling odors through the implementation of "reasonable and readily available technologies."
An example of those technologies, Middleton said, is manure digesters that generate digester gas that is burned as fuel to make electricity.
Posted by Marcia Oddi on December 23, 2009 01:26 PM
Posted to Environment