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New York Times
Supreme Court Says Farmers May Sue in
State Courts
By LINDA GREENHOUSE
Published: April 28, 2005
ASHINGTON, April 27 - The Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday that
farmers whose crops are damaged by federally approved pesticides
or herbicides may pursue damage claims against the manufacturers
in state court.
The 7-to-2 decision was one of the court's
most significant rulings on the pre-emptive effect of federal
statutes. In unusually pointed terms, the majority rejected the
Bush administration's view that lawsuits
claiming manufacturers negligently designed, tested or manufactured
their products are pre-empted by the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide
and Rodenticide Act, the federal law that governs the registration
and labeling of these products.
The case began as a threatened lawsuit in the Texas state courts
by 29 Texas peanut farmers whose crops failed five years ago after
they applied a new weed killer called Strongarm. After negotiations
with the farmers broke down and a suit was imminent, the manufacturer,
Dow AgroSciences, a unit of the Dow Chemical Company, went into
federal district court in Lubbock seeking a declaration that the
suit was pre-empted by the "uniformity" clause in the
statute.
That clause provides that states "shall not impose or continue
in effect any requirements for labeling or packaging in addition
to or different from those required" by the federal law.
In the view of the district court and the United States Court
of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, in a 2003 ruling, the company
was correct and the suit was barred.
The federal government had long taken the
position that the statute, usually referred to as Fifra, did not
pre-empt damage suits in state courts. But the Bush administration
reversed that position and urged the Supreme Court to deny the
appeal.
The justices nonetheless agreed to hear the case, Bates v. Dow
AgroSciences L.L.C., No. 03-388. The appeal has been closely watched
for signs of the court's evolving approach to pre-emption.
In general, a broad doctrine of pre-emption favors business by
keeping tort cases out of state court and avoiding the need to
satisfy 50 separate legal systems.
Since Fifra provides no right for individuals
to sue in federal court, a finding of pre-emption would have meant
that consumers would have no opportunity at all to sue manufacturers.
Arthur H. Bryant, executive director of Trial Lawyers for Public
Justice, a public-interest law firm representing consumers, said
the decision was "an important and striking development"
in light of the general trend in legislatures and courts toward
curbing access to the tort system.
The majority opinion by Justice John Paul Stevens said that the
Fifth Circuit, along with the many other courts to have given
pre-emptive effect to Fifra, had given too broad an interpretation
to the 1992 Supreme Court decision that found some suits against
cigarette manufacturers to be pre-empted by the federal cigarette
labeling law.
That case, Cipollone v. Liggett Group Inc., interpreted the pre-emption
clause of the cigarette law, which barred states from imposing
any additional "requirement or prohibition" on cigarette
manufacturers. The court held that states imposed additional requirements
by opening their courts to tort suits.
But that did not mean that all state court suits under all other
federal regulatory statutes were pre-empted, Justice Stevens said
on Wednesday. The main point of the opinion was that each statute
must be interpreted in its own context, according not only to
the statutory language but to the history of litigation involving
the regulated product.
State court suits against pesticide manufacturers had previously
been common, Justice Stevens said, and Congress should not be
interpreted to have displaced them without a more clear indication
that it intended to do so. He said that, properly read, the pre-emption
language in Fifra permitted suits under state laws that were "parallel"
to the federal law, as long as the states did not impose additional
or different regulatory requirements.
That meant in this case that the farmers' claims for "defective
design, defective manufacture, negligent testing and breach of
express warranty" were not pre-empted, the court concluded.
At the same time, the court ordered the
Fifth Circuit to give further consideration to whether the claims
for fraud and "failure to warn" could go forward or
were pre-empted.
Justice Stevens said the administration's
argument that Fifra broadly required pre-emption "is particularly
dubious given that just five years ago the United States advocated
the interpretation that we adopt today."
Dow no longer sells Strongarm in Texas, New Mexico or Oklahoma,
areas where the acidity of the soil evidently blocked the desired
action of the product and caused it to harm the crops.
In a dissenting opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas, joined by Justice
Antonin Scalia, said the suit should not go forward without giving
the Fifth Circuit the opportunity to reconsider its pre-emption
ruling for all the claims.
