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Princeton, MO (August 30, 2012) Premium Standard Farms LLC (PSF), along with Seeger Weiss LLP, The Middleton Firm, LLC and Speer Law Firm, PA, counsel for plaintiffs in longstanding Missouri nuisance litigation, issued the following joint statement today:
We are pleased to announce an agreement to settle the claims of almost three hundred individuals who asserted that PSF’s Missouri hog farm operations constitute a nuisance against their properties.
“This agreement effectively brings the Missouri nuisance litigation to a close,” said Jean Paul Bradshaw of Lathrop & Gage LLP, co-counsel for PSF along with McGuireWoods LLP, “and allows PSF to focus its entire efforts on what it does best: providing families with wholesome, nutritious food and creating jobs in Northern Missouri.”
Some claims against PSF, which was acquired by Smithfield Foods, Inc. in 2007, have been pending for over a decade. “The settlement announced today represents the culmination of a long battle,” said Stephen A. Weiss, co-lead counsel for the plaintiffs. “After four grueling trials over the past six years alone, we were prepared to litigate each claim, but this agreement hammered out between the parties is a fair and just resolution of what not long ago seemed to be an irresolvable dispute.”
Weiss’s co-lead counsel, Charles F. Speer, said that a major factor in his clients’ willingness to lay down their arms was PSF’s implementation of additional odor control systems in many of their company farms, including barn scrapers, pursuant to Consent Judgments entered into with the Missouri Attorney General in 2010.
The terms of the agreement are confidential.