IDAHO OUST VERDICT

Jury Finds Agency, DuPont Negligent in Land Case

Business Week

"A federal jury has found the Bureau of Land Management and E.I. DuPont de Nemours and Co. negligent in the use of an herbicide blamed for damaging thousands of acres of crops across a broad swath of southern Idaho.

“The verdict was welcome news to some of the 130 farmers whose potatoes, sugar beets, grains and corn crops were destroyed for several years when winds blew the powdery herbicide on to their nearby farmland."

"The farmers allege they lost millions of dollars worth of crops from 2000-2004 because the broad spectrum herbicide either killed plants or made land barren."

"The jury deliberated for nearly three days before reaching its unanimous conclusions, ending a trial that lasted more than six weeks by finding DuPont 60 percent at fault and the BLM 40 percent to blame."

The GEC Group provided five days of expert testimony to the jury in the bellwether trial regarding the economic damages suffered by the four bellwether farmers. GEC testified that lost crop income and associated debt-based costs for these four farmers totaled $16.4 million; the jury awarded $16.4 million. GEC collected, managed, and analyzed over 1.6 million documents, interviewed and met with hundreds of farmers, crop buyers and agronomists, and testified in federal court regarding the crop loss and resulting economic damages sustained by the plaintiffs.​

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