Bader Farms, Inc. v. Monsanto Co.
| Decision Date | 29 June 2017 |
| Docket Number | Case No. 1:16-CV-299 SNLJ |
| Parties | BADER FARMS, INC. and BILL BADER Plaintiffs, v. MONSANTO CO., Defendant. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Eastern District of Missouri |
This case comes before the Court on defendant's motion to dismiss that was converted by this Court into defendant's motion for summary judgment (#6, #50), and plaintiffs' motions for leave to file amended complaint (#51) and to vacate order treating defendant's motion to dismiss as a motion for summary judgment and motion for discovery (#52). The motions are briefed and ripe for disposition. Because the Court grants plaintiffs' motion for leave to file an amended complaint, the plaintiffs' motion to vacate this Court's previous order is necessarily granted. Defendant's converted motion for summary judgment is therefore denied as moot.
As more fully discussed in this Court's previous memorandum and order (#50), plaintiffs allege that their peach orchard was damaged when defendant commercially released its genetically-engineered and dicamba-resistant cotton and soybean seeds without a corresponding herbicide. Plaintiffs contend that defendant violated standard industry practice and committed a number of tortious acts by essentially releasing only half of the complete crop system. Because defendant only released half of the complete crop system, plaintiffs allege, it was reasonably foreseeable that third-party farmers who purchased defendant's seeds would illegally spray dicamba - a generic herbicide not developed, manufactured, distributed, or sold by the defendant - onto those seeds to prevent weed growth. Dicamba is a highly volatile herbicide that is prone to drift, a term used to denote the airborne movement of herbicide spray particles to non-target or neighboring sites, sometimes miles away. Dicamba is toxic to all broadleaf plants such as fruits, nuts, vegetables, and notably, cotton and soybeans that are not genetically engineered to withstand it. In this case, plaintiffs allege that unidentified farmers who purchased defendant's seeds illegally sprayed dicamba onto their own crops and that dicamba drifted onto plaintiffs' crops, causing millions of dollars in damage.
On December 30, 2016, defendant moved to dismiss plaintiffs' complaint (#6) for, inter alia, lack of proximate causation. This Court, upon consideration of the product use labels attached to defendant's seed packaging, converted defendant's motion to dismiss to a motion for summary judgment (#50). Within the same memorandum and order, this Court granted the parties an additional twenty-one days to present other materials and additional briefing. In response, plaintiffs filed their motions for leave to file an amended complaint (#51) and to vacate this Court's order treating defendant's motion to dismiss as a motion for summary judgment (#52). Within their motion for leave to file an amended complaint, plaintiffs seek leave to amend their original complaint to assert a new claim ofcivil conspiracy, incorporate relevant facts and allegations previously unavailable to plaintiffs prior to filing, and add additional allegations obtained in the ordinary course of this litigation. One such additional allegation, the basis of plaintiffs' proposed civil conspiracy claim, is that defendant's "representatives made a practice of directing farmers who purchased the Xtend seeds to illegally spray dicamba to their Xtend crops to protect their crops." Pl. Am. Comp. ¶ 124.
Specifically, plaintiffs submit the testimony of one such farmer who purchased defendant's dicamba-resistant cotton seeds and admitted to illegally spraying dicamba over the top of his crops. The farmer testified before the Arkansas State Plant Board on the allegation that his illegal action of spraying dicamba on his property damaged his neighbor's non-dicamba-resistant crops. The farmer's cotton farm is located in the same county as plaintiffs' orchards. Further, the farmer testified that a representative of defendant instructed him that he could spray dicamba over the top of the cotton that emerged from defendant's dicamba-resistant cotton seeds.
Under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, a party may amend its pleading once as a matter of course under specified conditions that are not applicable here. For all other amendments, Rule 15(a)(2) provides However, parties do not have an absolute right to amend their pleadings, even under this liberal standard. Sherman v. Winco Fireworks, Inc., 532 F.3d 709, 715 (8th Cir. 2008). Whether to grant a motion for leave to amend is within thediscretion of the court. Popoalii v. Correctional Med. Servs., 512 F.3d 488, 497 (8th Cir. 2008).
A district court appropriately denies a movant for leave to amend if there are compelling reasons such as "undue delay, bad faith, repeated failure to cure deficiencies by amendments previously allowed, undue prejudice to the nonmoving party, or futility of the amendment." Id. "[A] party is not entitled to amend a complaint without making a showing that such an amendment would be able to save an otherwise meritless claim." Jackson v. Riebold, 815 F.3d 1114, 1122 (8th Cir. 2016) (quoting Plymouth Cnty., Iowa v. Merscorp, Inc., 774 F.3d 1155,...
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