The judge and lawyers involved in a class-action lawsuit filed by Arkansas farmers against seed-maker Syngenta met by phone Tuesday to discuss how they should proceed.
There's a chance the lead lawsuit filed by Kenny Falwell of Eagle Lake Farms in Newport could be sent back to Arkansas for trial, U.S. District Judge John Lungstrum of Kansas hinted during a conference call.
The Falwell lawsuit is among thousands filed by corn growers across the country, alleging that Swiss seed manufacturer Syngenta cost farmers at least $3 billion in sales when the company's genetically modified corn disrupted the corn market in 2013 and 2014. Most of the lawsuits were consolidated into a handful and transferred to Lungstrum's judicial district in Kansas.
Last week, Lungstrum granted class-action status to Falwell's lawsuit, allowing Arkansas corn growers to join. Lungstrum did the same for lawsuits in seven other states and certified another as a nationwideclass action. Lungstrum named the Falwell lawsuit as a "bellwether" case, meaning it will be among the first to go to trial and a verdict will serve as an indicator to lawyers on both sides of how future cases will turn out.
Lungstrum also named John Emerson of the Emerson Scott law firm, with law offices in Little Rock and Houston, as the lead attorney for the Arkansas case. Lungstrum noted that the Arkansas case could have as many as 600 members while lawsuits in each of the other states could have thousands of members because they're larger corn producers.
Falwell's lawsuit was first filed in the eastern district of the U.S. District Court in Little Rock, before U.S. District Judge D. Price Marshall Jr. It, and some of the other statewide class-action lawsuits, could be returned to where they were originally filed, Lungstrum said.
Lungstrum said he was focused on a starting date some time in June for both a Kansas class-action lawsuit and the national lawsuit.
"I am determined this won't get bogged down," Lungstrum said. Coaxing lawyers from both sides to work together and calling them the "cream of the crop," Lungstrum said, "We'll work to do our best to avoid difficulties, but before it's all over, there could be difficulties."
He also asked lawyers to keep their briefs "succinct" and avoid a rehash of "old arguments," getting them to agree to a 20-page limit on pretrial matters.
Falwell and other Arkansas farmers are among plaintiffs who didn't buy or plant Syngenta's new corn seeds, called Agrisure Viptera and Duracade, which had been genetically modified to make it more resistant to the root worm and corn borer insects.
Falwell's case, like many others, allege Syngenta began marketing the genetically modified corn in 2011 even though many foreign markets hadn't yet approved -- or had outright banned -- imports of modified seed and modified byproducts. China, a burgeoning market for corn growers in the United States, was among those countries, but Syngenta assured farmers others in agribusiness that China's approval was imminent, according to the lawsuits.
By November 2013, inspectors in other countries discovered genetically modified grain mixed with nonmodified grain and halted U.S. imports, causing corn prices to drop from $7 a bushel to $3. China itself rejected more than 131 million bushels, according to the lawsuits, and didn't accept the modified grain until nearly five years after its introduction.
The case has been compared with a $750 million settlement in 2011 over contamination of the U.S. rice supply by Bayer AG's genetically modified rice, which hadn't yet been accepted by the European Union. Riceland Foods Inc. in Stuttgart was awarded $136.8 million, and many individual Arkansas farmers received payments for damages as well. Some 11,000 rice farmers in Arkansas, Mississippi, Missouri, Texas and Louisiana were involved in that lawsuit.
Business on 10/05/2016