St. Louis Business Journal | Feb 8, 2010
A federal jury in St. Louis has ordered Bayer Cropscience to pay $1.5 million to two Arkansas farmers and one Mississippi farmer because the Germany company hurt the farmers and their livelihood with its genetically modified rice.
This is the second of five “bellwether trials” scheduled for the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri that involve farmers in Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas, and could have an impact on the entire agriculture industry.
In December, a federal jury in St. Louis ordered the Bayer unit to pay $2 million to two Missouri farmers for losses sustained when the company’s experimental rice cross-bred with their crops.
St. Louis attorney Don Downing, of the firm Gray, Ritter & Graham, was the plaintiffs’ lead attorney in the first two cases and is co-lead counsel of the multi-district litigation.
With the most recent decision, Joe and Jim Penn, of Portia, Ark., were awarded $480,692 in compensatory damages and fellow Arkansas rice farmer Jerry Catt, of Corning, Ark., was awarded $96,996 in damages. Black Dog Planting Co., of Lyon, Miss., represented by partner Gary Goode, was awarded $923,154 in compensatory damages. The awards varied because they were based on the number of acres each farmer planted and the impact of the contamination on their land.
Discovery of the contamination led to a dramatic drop in U.S. rice prices, as the European Union stopped buying U.S. rice. The farmers suffered economic loss due to the much lower demand for their rice since 2006, when the contaminated rice was discovered.
More trials involving Bayer and rice farmers are scheduled for this summer in the same federal courtroom in St. Louis and will include farmers from Louisiana and Texas.
Aftermath News 
