Alan Guebert is an Illinois farm journalist.
It was just another typical tort-filled day in U.S. agriculture’s lawsuit la-la land.
On Feb. 17, lawyers for dairy processors and food companies argued in a U.S. Department of Agriculture administrative court that Secretary Dan Glickman has no legal authority to raise the minimum price paid to farmers for raw milk.
Later that same day, a Texas federal judge ruled Oprah Winfrey could not be sued under that state’s wacky veggie-libel law by two feedlot owners for wrecking the spring 1996 cattle market.
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Two telephone calls to this office Feb. 17, within 20 minutes of each other, offered new ag lawsuit news. In one, a Montana rancher suggested a group of western cattlemen are researching a lawsuit against the International Trade Commission for what he described as the “flood of imported beef that’s crushing U.S. ranchers and feeders.”
If it seems like everyone in agriculture is suing everyone else, it’s only because they are. For instance:
- A group of cattlemen continue to press their civil action against giant meatpacker IBP Inc. for alleged anticompetitive practices in the cattle market.
- Three major Illinois farm groups have asked an appellate court if they can file briefs in support of a lawsuit filed by a contractee of Murphy Family Farms against 57 local citizens who oppose a big hog farm in western Illinois.
- Congress soon will debate the $300 billion civil court settlement offered by tobacco companies even as a tobacco lawsuit is being heard in Minnesota.
- Most of the nation’s dairy farmers await the outcome of a USDA court appeal which may determine if the prices they receive under national milk market order system are legal.
Ag lawyers say the current logjam of costly, lengthy civil ag lawsuits has arisen for several reasons. The biggest, explains one lawyer, is “oftentimes farmers feel current laws, especially anti-trust laws, aren’t being enforced vigorously enough so they act on that belief through civil lawsuits.”
“In effect,” this lawyer adds, “these lawsuits often allege criminal activity or economic harm has occurred or is occurring, but the government, be it local or national, has failed to investigate or prosecute. So the farmers take the road most open to them: they sue in civil court.”
One Kansas cattleman, a plaintiff in a civil case, explains it this way: “If the government won’t protect us or our markets, then we have to protect ourselves in court. In the old days we’d gather a posse; today we gather lawyers.”
Another litigant in a major ag civil case believes the rash of courtroom duels are the worst course of action for farmers to take: “Lawsuits are slow, expensive, very narrow and rarely change anything.
“But until better laws are written, or the laws are better enforced, we got to sue just to get heard.”
As farm industries like pork and cattle consolidate or vertically integrate, immense market power becomes more concentrated in fewer, bigger hands. That sets up a natural big-versus-small conflict which, likely as not, will be litigated sooner or later.
Case in point, explains one Colorado rancher, is the lawsuit filed by 10 feedlot operators against IBP Inc. The cattlemen allege IBP unfairly influences cattle prices because of its size – IBP reportedly kills 38 percent of all beef cattle in the U.S. – and its “controlled cattle inventories,” or captive and contract cattle.
“No matter who you favor in this fight,” notes the rancher, “the question it raises – what happens to farmers when agriculture industrializes – is a question that all farmers have asked at one time or another. So the lawsuit is important.”
This rancher adds, “why isn’t our government or our farm organizations asking that very same question and searching for answers? Why do farmers have to sue or be sued to get some action?”
