Jury selection was scheduled to begin at 10 Thursday morning in the fifth trial involving plaintiffs seeking damages in hog nuisance lawsuits against Smithfield Foods’ subsidiary Murphy-Brown.
Judge Earl Britt was to preside in the case. A pretrial conference was slated an hour before, and the trial would begin after jury selection is complete.
The case is the second involving the Joey Carter Farm near Beulaville. Two other cases thus far have involved farms with ties to Bladen County, one of which is in the White Oak community.
The cases are being heavily watched by the hog industry. In North Carolina, hog farming supplies 46,000 jobs and is worth $11 billion.
Duplin, Sampson and Bladen counties are the leaders in hog production for the state, and rank among the top 15 in the nation. North Carolina is second only to Iowa in hog production in the U.S.
This case was delayed because of the federal government shutdown. It had originally been set to start just after the new year. Britt, who presided over the first three hog nuisance lawsuits involving Murphy-Brown, ordered the delay because jury pay could not be guaranteed beyond a week.
The shutdown ended last Friday. A deal to keep the government open for three weeks was put in place. It is unclear what will happen if the trial is still ongoing and another shutdown happens in two weeks.
In winning the first four cases, plaintiffs have been awarded $549,352,400 by juries. North Carolina law caps punitive damage amounts, reducing that figure to $97,982,400.
The most recent case, involving Sholar Farm in Sampson County, was the best showing yet for Smithfield Foods. In that case, Judge David Faber presided and cited a lack of evidence for punitive damages, resulting in eight plaintiffs splitting $102,400.
Four awards were for $100 each, a good distance away from the half a billion dollars awarded in the first three cases when Britt presided.
In addition to the change on the bench, the other significant change in the most recent trial was Smithfield Foods bringing in Robert Thackston, a lawyer based in Texas with ties to North Carolina. McGuireWoods, which led the first three cases, remains a part of the company’s counsel.
Thackston is part of the legal counsel in this case as well, according to the court calendar.
Plaintiffs are represented by Michael Kaeske, the Texas lawyer who came to North Carolina and cherry-picked neighbors of select farms contracted by Smithfield Foods. He is the owner of a law firm in Austin, Texas, and a former member of the Dallas law firm suing Chemours, the chemical plant at the Bladen-Cumberland county line that produces the GenX compound.