Smithfield Trial: The Rest of the Story

After reading the transcript of the trial I thought, They were in a trap before the first witness spoke a word.The roots of the lawsuit against Smithfield Foods run back over five years to when a pair of out-of-state lawyers, Charles Speer from Kansas City and Richard Middleton from Savannah, saw a way to make money by suing North Carolina hog farmers.To file their lawsuits Speer and Middleton needed clients. So, with the help of anti-hog farming groups, lawyers from their firms knocked on doors of farmers’ neighbors, saying, ‘Sign here, we’ll file the lawsuit, we’ll pay the bills, and if we win you’ll get part of the money.’It worked. They signed up hundreds of clients.They then partnered with a North Carolina law firm, Wallace and Graham, and filed their lawsuits. But, not long after that, a state judge sent Speer and Middleton packing, adding he didn’t ever want to see them in his courtroom again. The judge handed the lawsuits (and the clients) to Wallace and Graham which then partnered with a law firm from Texas.Earlier this year, before the first ‘nuisance’ trial started, the lead lawyer from Texas asked the judge to instruct Smithfield’s lawyers not to mention Speer and Middleton to the jurors. And the judge agreed. So, Smithfield couldn’t tell jurors about lawyers filing lawsuits to make money.As soon as the trial started the plaintiffs’ lawyer, Michael Kaeske, began hammering Smithfield Foods, telling jurors Smithfield was a big corporation with a lot of money and if it had just spent $500 million it could have cured the problems with odor on hog farms across North Carolina. Why hadn’t Smithfield done that? The answer was simple: Greed. Michael Kaeske made Smithfield Foods into a villain.And when the trial ended that was the picture the jury had: Smithfield was a greedy varmint and Michael Kaeske’s clients were long-suffering victims.No juror ever heard the rest of the story. Because no lawyer could ask a plaintiff: You lived beside Billy Kinlaw’s hog farm for 18 years and never complained once about odor – until those lawyers from Missouri and Georgia knocked on your door and said you could make money if you joined their lawsuit. Was that a coincidence?The jurors didn’t even know that the lawyers standing in front of them, suing Smithfield Foods, had asked the judge to keep that fact from them.Often, at the end of a trial, a jury has to answer a straightforward question: Who’s the villain? Michael Kaeske, free to say pretty much whatever he wanted about Smithfield Foods, turned it into a villain. And Smithfield’s lawyers, with their hands tied, couldn’t tell the rest of the story.

Smithfield Foods to Appeal Nuisance Lawsuit Verdict

A statement was released by Smithfield Foods regarding the recent verdict of the nuisance lawsuits. It is as follows:

Smithfield Foods Statement Regarding North Carolina Verdict

We are extremely disappointed by the verdict. We will appeal to the Fourth Circuit, and we are confident we will prevail. We believe the outcome would have been different if the court had allowed the jury to (1) visit the plaintiffs’ properties and the Kinlaw farm and (2) hear additional vital evidence, especially the results of our expert’s odor-monitoring tests.These lawsuits are an outrageous attack on animal agriculture, rural North Carolina and thousands of independent family farmers who own and operate contract farms. These farmers are apparently not safe from attack even if they fully comply with all federal, state and local laws and regulations. The lawsuits are a serious threat to a major industry, to North Carolina’s entire economy and to the jobs and livelihoods of tens of thousands of North Carolinians.From the beginning, the lawsuits have been nothing more than a money grab by a big litigation machine. Plaintiffs’ original lawyers promised potential plaintiffs a big payday. Those lawyers were condemned by a North Carolina state court for unethical practices. Plaintiffs’ counsel at trial relied heavily on anti-agriculture, anti-corporate rhetoric rather than the real facts in the case. These practices are abuses of our legal system, and we will continue to fight them.—Statement by Keira Lombardo, Senior Vice President of Corporate Affairs, Smithfield Foods, Inc.  

One Farmer's Story

Last summer, the Bladen Journal wrote a story about Hilton Monroe who, along with his wife, raises hogs on his sixty-six acre farm near Clarkton.The reporter described how he and Monroe drove down a dirt road that wound through a forest and stopped by two hog houses – then wrote:

Upon stepping out of the vehicle, the first thing one might notice is the absence of something – an aroma. There was no odor. Of any kind. None. “People think hog houses really, smell, and I’m not trying to paint a pretty picture or say they don’t because they do, but not nearly as much as people think,” Monroe said. Even standing on the shore of the lagoon while Monroe took a water sample – which he’s required to do every 120 days to check the nitrogen level – there was no observable odor. Monroe explained that the plastic curtains lining the hog houses serve multiple functions, one of which is to contain any odor pollution. “I’ve been farming all my life, and I’ve never had a complaint from my closest neighbors,” he said, adding that people have even built houses on the other side of the trees that line the whole operation.

Next the reporter asked Monroe about the state regulations hog farmers deal with – then wrote:

The water samples and the plastic curtains are just two items in a long list of regulations to which Monroe must adhere. The houses must remain around 80 degrees Fahrenheit (give or take, depending on the hog’s size), and the temperature must be recorded on charts. The lagoon can never top a certain height or contain too much nitrogen. Spraying can only be done when the temperature and humidity are just right, and never within four days of a hurricane. A certain amount of acreage must be sprayed for every hog. No steroids to make hogs grow faster. And on and on. “I think regulations are a good thing – I think we should have them, and other hog farmers I know feel the same way, and we do our best to abide by the regulations,” he added. “If you’re going to be a hog farmer, you have to take care of the environment.”

The article ends with a simple question – the reporter asked Monroe why he’s a farmer: “I’m just a drop in the bucket helping to feed the world,” Hilton said. “It makes me feel good to know somebody, somewhere has food because of what I do.”