The owner of what used to be Arkansas' largest commercial bee-and-honey operation has filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court against Bayer for financial losses caused by dicamba damage.
The lawsuit, filed Tuesday by Little Rock attorney Richard Mays for the family-owned Coy's Honey Farm, mirrors hundreds of lawsuits filed in 2017 and 2018 against dicamba manufacturers such as Monsanto. Bayer bought Monsanto in 2018 and absorbed Monsanto's liabilities, including the lawsuits.
Richard Coy, a co-owner of Coy's Honey Farm, told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in January 2019 that he had begun moving some 13,000 hives from 260 sites in eastern Arkansas to the Gulf Coast of Mississippi because of dicamba damage to vegetation crucial to bees' ability to pollinate.
Bayer agreed last year to settle the many dicamba lawsuits for $300 million, plus $100 million for attorneys' fees and other expenses incurred in the class-action settlement program. The settlement, however, benefited only soybean producers. Other lawsuits, such as Coy's, had to be filed separately.
Coy's lawsuit says he lost income from the sale of honey as production dropped and from leasing hives to farmers to help pollinate crops. He closed the honey sales operation, Crooked Creek Bee Co. in Jonesboro, in January 2019.
The lawsuit was assigned to U.S. District Judge Kristine G. Baker. The lawsuit seeks more than $75,000 in compensatory damage and unspecified punitive damages. The case is 3:21-CV-00104.