Friends of NC Farm Families: Eve Honeycutt

Farm families extend beyond the farmer and their immediate family members. It also includes a large network of friends and colleagues that have a part in helping the farmer grow crops and raise livestock. We want to introduce you to some of these “friends of farmers” for three reasons:

1. They work hard and deserve to be recognized and thanked.

2. While farm families are our core, agriculture is a much bigger family. Farming wouldn’t work without our friends.

3. To show just how profoundly agriculture connects us.

We are excited to start this series. If you would like to nominate a “Friend of NC Farm Families”, shoot us a message! For now, though, let’s meet our first highlight: Eve Honeycutt

Even Honeycutt has been an Extension Livestock Agent in Lenoir and Greene Counties for 16 years. When speaking with her, it doesn’t take long for her passion for agriculture and farmers to shine through. She is knowledgeable, passionate, and great with both farmers and youth! Eve assists farmers in their operations, teaches youth, and is a strong advocate for agriculture. During Hurricanes Matthew and Florence, Eve organized a staging area for farm donations. That is so like Eve—always willing to give her talents, time, and knowledge. We are so thankful to call Eve a friend and for everything she does for agriculture.

Did you grow up in agriculture?

Ironically, no. I grew up in Washington, NC and never could seem to figure out exactly what excited me. I loved animals and wanted lots of them, but we lived in a subdivision and livestock animals were not allowed. We did not know any 'farm people'. Finally my mom got me involved in 4-H, and I met some! The closest farm animal was a horse, so I took riding lessons and became involved at a local horse farm that also raised hay and cattle.

Why did you want to become an Extension Agent?

I continued my career in 4-H and competed at the national level in various contests. It was those experiences that got me interested in agriculture, though I still wasn't sure what to do with that interest. My sophomore year of college, I did an internship with my local county Extension office. I fell in love with the idea of combining my passion for helping people and my love of animals.

How do you help farmers?

As an Extension Agent, it is my job to provide educational agricultural opportunities and services to the citizens who need my help. In my area, the most economically important animals are poultry and swine. A big part of managing poultry and swine farms is understanding the regulations that surround the management of their waste. I work closely with farm owners to make sure they know and understand these regulations. I provide technical services such as sludge surveys, irrigation equipment calibration, nutrient management plans, and record keeping.

Favorite and most difficult part about your job?

Favorite: I get to do something different almost every day. Some days I have farm visits all day and never go to the office. I love being outside and helping people at the same time.

Difficult: While I love Extension work, it can be difficult to balance time to dedicate to all the parts of my job and also balance a family life. However, Extension offers a lot of flexibility that I would not have in other jobs.

You've been a fierce agvocate for farmers, especially hog farmers. What pushes you to do that?

I guess it’s because I visit with them all the time. I hear their stories, I see their farms. I see how much they really care about their animals, their land, their community. I go to church with them. Then I see the lies being told about them. It makes me frustrated and angry to think people would outright lie just to push their own agenda, and then the general population believes the lies because they simply do not know the truth.

What ways do you educate others about agriculture?

I work a lot with youth activities such as livestock judging, ag awareness days, and school enrichment. It is amazing how little most children know about their food and how animals are raised. I am very passionate about teaching children (and adults) about agriculture so that I can try to win them over- even if it is one at a time.

Proudest moment as an Extension Agent?

In the spring of 2019, I received the Lois Britt Service Award from the NC Pork Council. Mrs. Britt was a well known and very respected member of the pork industry, as well as a former Extension Agent. To have my name mentioned in the same sentence as hers was an honor I will never forget.

Favorite pork product?

Probably bacon, though I do love a good whole hog barbecue!

Murphy-Brown appeal highlights seven errors in nuisance lawsuits

If you have been following the events of the nuisance lawsuits involving North Carolina’s hog farms, you know that many questionable decisions were made in the courtroom. You know that there were many mistakes and a whole lot of heartache. Murphy-Brown has filed an appeal that highlights seven serious errors made by the trial court. Those arguments include:

 Punitive damages should not have been allowed. NC law says a plaintiff “must prove the existence of an aggravating factor by clear and convincing evidence” to be awarded punitive damages. Aggravating factors include fraud, malice, and willful or wanton conduct, which means the “conscious and intentional disregard of and indifference to the rights and safety of others, which the defendant knows or should know is reasonably likely to result in injury, damage, or other harm.”

 The standard for imposing punitive damages requires evidence of even “more than gross negligence.” The plaintiffs in this case fell far short of reaching that high bar. Murphy-Brown noted that it was not aware of any alleged problems at Kinlaw Farm and took proactive steps on the farm to reduce odors. In addition, the plaintiffs did not prove any misconduct by Murphy-Brown.

 Improper evidence was allowed, and the court failed to separate the trial into two phases. The district court made two important mistakes. First, it allowed plaintiffs to introduce “irrelevant and highly prejudicial evidence” relating to profits and executive compensation at Smithfield Foods and WH Group, the grandparent company of Murphy-Brown. Then, the court compounded that mistake by refusing Murphy-Brown’s request to divide the case into two phases: one dealing with the question of whether the farm posed a nuisance, then a second phase (if necessary) focused on the issue of punitive damages.

 “Plaintiffs were also allowed to emphasize that WH Group is based in China, and to suggest that Murphy-Brown made profits that were sent overseas. That appeal to raw prejudice sought to inflame the jury. And it worked,” Murphy-Brown says.

 With regard to the court’s failure to hold a separate phase for punitive damages, Murphy-Brown noted North Carolina’s mandatory bifurcation statute, “which ensures that a jury does not hear inflammatory evidence supporting punitive damages until after it has found liability and set compensatory damages.” (Bifurcation is the legal term for separating a trial into two phases.)

 Notably, when a substitute judge presided over the fourth trial, the case was bifurcated – and no punitive damages were allowed.

 Plaintiffs’ expert opinions were admitted, while Murphy-Brown’s were excluded. The law says that testimony must be “based on sufficient facts or data” and derive from “reliable principles and methods” that “the expert has reliably applied . . . to the facts of the case.”  Murphy-Brown argues that the court “failed to apply those principles correctly or evenhandedly.”

 The plaintiffs’ star witness was a professor from New York named Shane Rogers. He conceded he is not an odor expert but was allowed to testify about the presence of odor at the plaintiffs’ homes “based on an untested and unreliable methodology.” Murphy-Brown argues that “because Rogers’s methodology was untested and unreliable, his testimony should have been excluded in its entirety.”

 On the other hand, the court excluded an extensive odor study by a recognized authority on environmental odors: Dr. Pamela Dalton, a Murphy-Brown witness who relied on a published, peer-reviewed protocol and nationally-accepted tool to measure odor. Dalton has a doctorate in experimental psychology, a master’s degree in public health, and is a researcher at the world’s only independent, non-profit scientific institute dedicated to research on the senses of taste and smell.

 Dalton conducted a thorough, multi-week study to monitor odor frequency and intensity around Kinlaw Farm. Her study showed that any odor the plaintiffs experienced from the farm was minimal: only 3.1% of farm odors (66 out of 2109 total readings) were detected at an intensity that could be considered elevated and objectionable. In studies she conducted at other North Carolina hog farms involved in these lawsuits, Dalton found results that showed even less odor intensity.

 As a result of this uneven treatment, the jury was deprived from hearing objective odor evidence that favored Murphy-Brown and wrongly allowed to hear testimony from only the plaintiffs’ expert on the central issue of odor.

 The district court erred in concluding that Kinlaw Farms is not a necessary and indispensable party. These lawsuits were filed against Murphy-Brown and did not include the family farmers who own and operate the farms in many of the cases. Excluding these farmers was an intentional ploy by the plaintiffs to keep the cases out of state court. When this issue was raised with the court, it concluded that the Kinlaw Farm was “not an indispensable party required for the case to proceed.”

 And, yet, there are no hogs on Billy Kinlaw’s farm today. After a jury declared his Bladen County farm a nuisance, Murphy-Brown could not continue to place animals at this facility, to protect itself and the farmer amid the ongoing litigation. There is simply no denying that this case had a direct bearing on the farm’s continued viability.

 The appeal goes on to highlight four additional errors:

 The jury was improperly allowed to consider damages beyond diminution in property value. The Right to Farm Act, as clarified in 2017, limits nuisance damages to the loss of property value. (And the plaintiffs claimed no loss of property value.)

 The court rejected Murphy-Brown’s statute-of-limitations defense. NC law imposes a three-year statute of limitations on nuisance actions. A claim for “continuing” nuisance — when a single event causes alleged continuing damage — must be brought within three years of the original event causing the harm. A claim for a “recurring” nuisance — when periodic acts allegedly cause repeated injuries — can be brought more than three years after the first occurrence, but damages are limited to a three-year window preceding the suit. The jury was not given the opportunity to determine if the claims in this case involved a continuing or recurring nuisance. 

 Murphy-Brown notes that the plaintiffs successfully argued to the court that the nuisance was recurring, then “changed their tune at trial, telling the jury that the nuisance was constant and permanent.” It highlights testimony from plaintiffs such as Daphne McKoy, who said the conditions have “always been the same.” Even Michael Kaeske, the Texas trial lawyer representing the plaintiffs, said in his opening argument that “odor is a relatively constant nuisance.”

 The district court wrongly predicted that North Carolina would adopt “vicarious liability” for nuisance. This is a somewhat complicated legal issue relating to the court’s instructions to the jury. Essentially, the court was wrong to tell the jury that Murphy-Brown could be “vicariously liable” for conduct at Kinlaw Farm that it had “reason to know” was likely to become a nuisance.

 In addition to the Murphy-Brown appeal, the NC Pork Council, NC Farm Bureau and other agricultural groups filed a brief that highlights additional issues that call into question the “overall fairness of the trial, which does not give the appearance of having been conducted on a level playing field.” Specifically, they highlight the location of the trial and the court’s refusal to allow jurors to visit the Kinlaw Farm themselves.

 Read more about what happens next.

The N.C. Pork Council recently published a comprehensive update on the nuisance lawsuits and the appeal filed by Murphy-Brown with the U.S. Court of Appeals. NC Farm Families is providing a condensed summary of that article to keep our farm families informed about the status of the lawsuits and the arguments in Murphy-Brown’s appeal. You can read the entire article in the NC Pork Report.

All eyes on Richmond: An update on Murphy-Brown’s appeal of nuisance lawsuits

 North Carolina’s hog farmers came under a vicious, well-financed attack by class-action law firms in recent years. Five cases went to trials, with negative – and unfair – outcomes in each. Now, the first trial, which involved the Kinlaw Farm in Bladen County, is making its way through the appeals process at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, based in Richmond, Va.

 The first trial verdict must be reversed. That’s the message from defendant Murphy-Brown in a persuasive 58-page brief that outlines, in meticulous detail, the numerous and significant errors made by W. Earl Britt, the judge who presided over the case.

 The appeal makes clear how critical the appeals court’s review will be.

 “This suit is the tip of a spear aimed at North Carolina’s agricultural economy,” the appeals brief says. “… A great deal depends on the outcome of these coordinated lawsuits, including the livelihoods of many in eastern North Carolina’s predominantly agricultural communities.”

 Indeed, it does.

 The appeals court filings — and accompanying briefs filed by the NC Pork Council, NC Farm Bureau, and other agricultural groups — outline how the plaintiffs received unfair jury decisions by claiming that hog farms near their rural North Carolina homes are a nuisance.

 The appeals note that the plaintiffs did not seek any injunctive relief — that is, they did not ask the court to make any changes on the farms. They just want money, and they have their sights set on Murphy-Brown, the state’s largest hog producer and a division of Smithfield Foods.

 Murphy-Brown has identified seven critical mistakes that occurred during the trial and by the judge that influenced the outcome of the cases. Those mistakes can be read here.

 “These errors took a costly toll. Deprived of the opportunity to resolve factual disputes, improperly exposed to prejudicial evidence, misled by one-sided expert testimony, and misinformed about the law, the jury awarded ten plaintiffs more than $50 million — all for the alleged annoyance and discomfort of living near a farm that opened nearly 25 years ago,” the court filing says.

 The brief filed by the NC Pork Council, NC Farm Bureau and other agricultural groups raises concerns about additional issues that call into question the “overall fairness of the trial, which does not give the appearance of having been conducted on a level playing field.” Specifically, they highlight the location of the trial and the court’s refusal to allow jurors to visit the Kinlaw Farm themselves.

 Through five trials, held from April 2018 to March 2019, juries awarded 36 plaintiffs a total of $550.5 million. (The awards were later reduced to approximately $98 million due to a state law that places a limit on punitive damages.)  Those verdicts have put family farmers out of business and taken a toll on our rural communities.

 What Happens Next

Murphy-Brown has asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit to consider the following options:

 (1) Reverse the punitive damages award because there was insufficient evidence to allow punitive damages, and order a new trial limited to liability and compensatory damages;

 (2) Dismiss the case because (a) damages should have been limited to the plaintiffs’ loss of property value, of which none was presented, and (b) the trial did not include Kinlaw Farms, an indispensable party, thereby forcing the plaintiffs to refile their case in state court; or

 (3) Order a new trial that (a) excludes the testimony of plaintiffs’ expert Shane Rogers and permits the excluded testimony of Dr. Pamela Dalton; (b) excludes improper evidence relating to the profits of Smithfield Food and WH Group, as well as the nationality of ownership; and (c) allows the jury to determine whether the claimed nuisance is continuing or recurring.

 Murphy-Brown has requested the opportunity to present its case in front of a Court of Appeals panel. At this time, no decision has been made about whether oral arguments will be made. If allowed, those arguments would not be made until December 2019 or early next year.

 There is no set timeline for when the Court of Appeals may ultimately decide this case. If oral arguments are presented, the court typically issues a ruling within three to six months. In the meantime, the remaining nuisance lawsuits – and future planned trials – are on hold.

 So, we wait. And we pray. And we hope that the appeals court will exercise wisdom and good judgment in reversing the many errors that were made in a Raleigh courtroom.  We will continue to stand by our family farmers and tell their side of the story.

The N.C. Pork Council recently published a comprehensive update on the nuisance lawsuits and the appeal filed by Murphy-Brown with the U.S. Court of Appeals. NC Farm Families is providing a condensed summary of that article to keep our farm families informed about the status of the lawsuits and the arguments in Murphy-Brown’s appeal. You can read the entire article in the NC Pork Report.