Bayer not sued in a class action for bio-tech rice
The good news for Bayer is that they don’t have to deal with a class action from disgruntled farmers, but that doesn’t mean it is the end of litigation.
A federal judge denied a class action lawsuit to be filed against Bayer CropScience AG over the accidental release of experimental genetically engineered rice into the food supply.
The rice farmers want to sue Bayer CropScience because they suffered great losses due to the contamination. The accidental release of the experimental rice supplies, called Liberty Link, into the public food supply in 2006 caused several foreign countries to ban imports. This led to a disastrous lowering of US rice prices.
However, the Liberty Link strain of rice was not deemed harmful to humans, but it was not approved for human consumption by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The department found that the rice was sneaked in from a corporate-funded test plot at Louisiana State University, where it was grown alongside commercial varieties.
The reason behind U.S. District Judge Catherine Perry’s ruling was that although Bayer was clearly at fault, the farmers’ claims were too different from one another to be put together into a single class action.
If the case had been certified, thousands of farmers in rice-farming states such as Missouri and Arkansas could have joined the class action.
Bayer CropScience said in a statement it “welcomed” the ruling, “We believe we have acted responsibly and have complied with all relevant regulations and guidelines in our biotech rice development activities.”
Don Downing, an attorney with Gray Ritter and Graham in St. Louis who represents farmers in the case, said the plaintiffs are considering an appeal on the ruling.
“I think a lot of farmers were waiting to see if a class was would be certified. I think now that judge Perry has declined to certify that case, then there may well be an influx of a lot more lawsuits,” said Downing.
Downing also reckoned that all the lawsuits would not have to be tried seaprately, even if they were not given class-action status.
For example, farmers might choose to litigate a handful of “test cases,” and then try to settle based on the verdicts in those cases.
Related posts:
- U.S. rice farmers seek class action against Bayer
- Wal-Mart class action given the green light
- Sun Microsystems sued in overtime class action
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