Premises Liability - Friday, April 30, 2010 15:43 - 0 Comments

$11 Million Awarded In Hog Odor Verdict

A Jackson County, Missouri jury awarded $11 million today to neighboring farmers who sued a factory farm operation saying hog odors were so bad they couldn’t go outside. The jury returned the verdict against industrial hog producers Premium Standard Farms, Inc. (“Premium Standard”), a subsidiary of Smithfield Foods SFD, and the privately held ContiGroup Companies. The verdict, covering 11 years of damages, is the largest monetary award against a hog farm in an odor nuisance case. The Middleton Firm, Seeger Weiss LLP and the Speer Law Firm represented the seven households, who filed their case in 2002. Plaintiffs, some of whom have owned their farms for well over 100 years and spanning five generations, alleged that relentless and extreme odors emanating from Defendants’ finishing farm – known as concentrated animal feeding operations, or CAFOs – created an unreasonable nuisance.
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