I grew up in a small rice-farming town. I can still remember when we got our first traffic light in town. The local joke was you knew it was time for the annual Rice Harvest festival because the traffic light would change color. We had one car dealer in town and old Mr. Miller sold Chevrolets. His advertising slogan was always: “eggs and Chevrolets are cheaper in the country.” We had plenty of chickens so we didn’t need to buy eggs, but that was where we would get our trucks.
As a farmer in the mid-west you are under constant assault by lawyers from all over the country trying to represent you in the present wave of litigation. Our law firm, Watts Guerra, is partially to blame. We represented 3500 rice farmers in 2006 that filed individual lawsuits against Bayer Crop Sciences. Bayer had allowed an unapproved GMO rice trait to contaminate the American rice crop and our export partners banned American rice, and as you would expect the price of rice collapsed. We helped negotiate the $750 million settlement, which Bayer paid. Because of our success in the largest GMO lawsuit in history, now every lawyer with a bar card wants to be a corn famer’s lawyer. I have watched our clients pull multiple letters out of the trash can, to show me just how much mail they get from out of state lawyers asking to represent them.
Eggs are definitely cheaper in the country, but probably not lawyers. However, there are some advantages to hiring a local lawyer to help represent you. If you were having heart surgery, you would want the best team possible to represent you. Your local doctor may not be an expert in heart surgery, but he does know you. Thus if you had to choose, you would want a team consisting of your local doctor and an expert from Virgin Mason Medical Clinic, from out of state. You would want the best expert in the nation and your local doctor as your team.
The claims against Syngenta should be thought of in much the same way. Your local area lawyers may never have gone to trial in a ‘mass tort GMO’ lawsuit. So you would like a nationally known law firm with experience working on the largest GMO lawsuit. However, you might also want a local lawyer from your state as part of the team. Your local lawyer knows the farming community and has experience representing farmers in your state.
Watts Guerra is teamed up with lawyers all across the mid-west. For example, in Nebraska we have several local Nebraska law firms on our team. Thus a Nebraska farmer can hire Watts Guerra and a local Nebraska lawyer as part of the same team to represent them. The fee agreement clients sign require lawyers in different firms to disclose their fee sharing arrangement. Thus, you can tell which lawyers will represent you by reading the contract of employment by which you hire the lawyer. Any contract you receive from an out-of-state law firm, you should read carefully. If the agreement says there are 2 firms representing you, look to see if you have local counsel from your home state as well as counsel from a firm with experience in GMO litigation.
If you do not have a local in-state lawyer named in your contract, then you are not hiring a local home-state attorney. You want both the expertise in GMO litigation and the expertise in your home state. For example, if you live in Nebraska, look to see if the lawyer’s contract identifies a local in-state Nebraska law firm. In addition, by hiring a Nebraska law firm, a portion of the legal fee you pay will stay in state with the Nebraska lawyer. It is buying local.
The lawsuits will ultimately be heard in 2 principle places: Minnesota and Kansas. If you filed a suit in just about any state except Minnesota, the case would be moved to Kansas. Lets assume a Nebraska farmer filed a lawsuit in Nebraska State Court. Syngenta would remove the suit from State Court to Federal Court. The case would then be transferred as part of the Multi-District Litigation process, to Federal Court in Kansas. Thus, a Nebraska farmer does not have to be concerned about experience in Nebraska courts, for the Syngenta cases, because none of them will be tried in Nebraska. Watts Guerra is filing its cases principally in Minnesota State Court, where we have experience trying cases and we have relationships with local firms in Minnesota. We have a team approach, as we believe it serves our clients’ interests.
If you get contracts in the mail from lawyers from another state, read them, and see who you are really hiring. When you get a contract, look for both the Watts Guerra name and a local Nebraska lawyer.
Written by:
Jon Givens
Watts Guerra LLP
4 Dominion Drive, Bldg. 3, Suite 100
San Antonio, Texas 78257
Phone (210) 447-0500
© Watts Guerra LLP 2015
