Idaho Farmers, Holland & Hart Prevail in Herbicide Case Against Government, DuPont

(From The American Lawyer)

A federal jury in Idaho has ruled in favor of four farmers who claimed their crops were destroyed by the Bureau of Land Management's use of a powerful herbicide. After a 17-week trial, jurors in the U.S. district court in Boise ruled that the government and the manufacturer of the herbicide must pay $17.8 million to cover the growers' losses.

At issue in the case was the bureau's decision to use Oust, an herbicide manufactured by E.I. DuPont, to kill off brush growth and prevent wildfires on government-owned land. But, the jury ruled, the government should have known that the herbicide it used, sprayed on fields by helicopter, would be caught by the wind and blown to adjacent farm land, causing the barley, wheat, potatoes, and beets grown on Idaho fields to wither or die. Worse, the government sprayed Oust repeatedly over the course of many growing seasons, between 2000 and 2004, causing the farmland to lie fallow for extended periods. (The suit was originally filed in 2002.)

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