Could defeat in nuisance lawsuits herald a reckoning for the NC hog industry?
Shortly after Smithfield Foods lost its third consecutive hog nuisance case in federal court, company CEO Ken Sullivan wrote a letter. In it, Sullivan reassured the company’s employees and contract growers that while Smithfield faced tens of millions of dollars in damages to neighbors of the offending farms, as well as untold legal fees, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals would bend the arc of justice back their way.
“Since the early stages of these cases, we’ve believed North Carolina law is on our side,” Sullivan wrote in August 2018, “and the real case about the plaintiffs and their properties has been buried in an avalanche of distraction, manipulation and manufactured evidence.”
Smithfield would never settle, company officials often said.
Now Smithfield is settling.
Last week the federal appeals court, in a 2-1 decision, sided with the neighbors. Judges found just one snowflake in the so-called avalanche, ordering that a jury recalculate punitive damages without the consideration of company officials’ multi-million-dollar salaries. The rest of the plaintiffs’ arguments were upheld.
Read more: http://www.ncpolicywatch.com/2020/11/24/could-defeat-in-nuisance-lawsuits-herald-a-reckoning-for-the-nc-hog-industry/
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