Bader Farms appealed a judgment in its lawsuit against BASF and Monsanto to the Eighth Circuit. The two separate lawsuits were docketed on Tuesday. The company is asking the court to rule in its favor and grant the plaintiffs the original judgment rather than the reduced judgment, one-third of the original amount.
The matter was transferred to the District Court in late 2016, and was being heard in the Eastern District of Missouri for about four years. The plaintiff purported that its peach trees were irreparably damaged because herbicide with dicamba was used on nearby crops, designed to be resistant to dicamba herbicides, but spread to the peach trees causing damage.
Bader Farms gave notice of its appeal of the decision to the Eighth Circuit last Thursday in the original Eastern District of Missouri case. In November, the district court reduced the judgment from $265 million, determined in a three-week jury trial which ended in February, to $75 million judgment, including $15 million in punitive damages and $60 million in plus post-judgment interest.
The Notice of Appeal reported that Bader Farms is appealing the November 25 judgment, its accompanying Memorandum and Order, along with “all other orders, rulings, docket entries, or judgments … that affected, serve as predicates for, or led up to and are merged or subsumed in either the final judgment … and any other adverse orders, rulings or docket entries.”
In a separate Ninth Circuit lawsuit filed earlier this year, the court ruled to cancel the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)’s registration of dicamba, ruling that it was too likely to damage crops; however, the EPA re-registered dicamba products after this ruling. Some of the same plaintiffs filed a lawsuit against the new registrations on Monday.
Bader Farms, Inc. and Bill Bader are represented by Randles and Splittgerber, Davis and George, and Rowdy Meeks Legal Group. The defendants are represented by Thompson Coburn, Nelson Mullins, Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner, Hepler Broom, and Faegre Drinker Biddle & Reath.
