Johnson v. Consumers Coop. Ass'n of Litchfield
| Decision Date | 18 March 2019 |
| Docket Number | A18-0517 |
| Parties | Oluf Johnson, et al., Appellants, v. Consumers Cooperative Association of Litchfield, Respondent. |
| Court | Minnesota Court of Appeals |
This opinion will be unpublished and may not be cited except as provided by Minn. Stat. § 480A.08, subd. 3 (2018).
Affirmed
Meeker County District Court
Kristine A. Tietz, Kaitlyn J. Johnson, Chelsea A. Walcker, Robins Kaplan LLP, Minneapolis, Minnesota (for appellants)
Troy A. Poetz, Matthew W. Moehrle, Rajkowski Hansmeier Ltd., St. Cloud, Minnesota (for respondent)
Scott W. Carlson, Lynn A. Hayes, Lindsay Kuehn, Farmers' Legal Action Group, St. Paul, Minnesota; and
Jill Witkowski Heaps, (pro hac vice), Environmental and Natural Resources Law Clinic, Vermont Law School, South Royalton, Vermont (for amicus curiae Organic Farmers Association, Center for Food Safety, and Organic Farmers' Agency for Relationship Marketing)
Considered and decided by Hooten, Presiding Judge; Reyes, Judge; and Cochran, Judge.
UNPUBLISHED OPINION
Appellants and organic farmers Oluf and Debra Johnson filed a civil suit alleging that, because of pesticides that drifted onto their farmland as a result of respondent's spraying of an adjacent field, the organic certification of a portion of their farmland was suspended and they had to destroy the crops grown there. The district court granted summary judgment for respondent on the claims arising from the loss of appellants' organic certification. The district court based its ruling on the Minnesota Supreme Court's decision in Johnson v. Paynesville Farmers Union Co-op. Oil Co., which held that organic certification could not be suspended based on pesticide drift because the phrase "applied to" in 7 C.F.R. § 205.202(b) unambiguously refers to the intentional application of prohibited substances by an organic producer. 817 N.W.2d 693, 712 (Minn. 2012). The district court held that therefore, as a matter of law, pesticide drift could not be the proximate cause of the suspension of a field's organic certification. Id. We are bound by the Minnesota Supreme Court's decision in Johnson, and thus we affirm the district court's dismissal of appellants' claims relating to the suspension of their field's organic certification.
In early June of 2014, respondent Consumers Cooperative Association (CCA) was spraying pesticide on a conventional farm that is adjacent to appellants' organic farm when the wind caused some of the pesticide to drift onto appellants' organic alfalfa field, contaminating their organic crops. The next day, the Minnesota Department of Agriculture(MDA) inspected appellants' farm to test for the presence of pesticides and discovered prohibited substances. The MDA ordered appellants to destroy the contaminated crops and issued a civil penalty to CCA for causing the drift. Following this instruction to destroy the contaminated crops, appellants contacted their organic certifier, OCIA International, Inc. (OCIA), and requested a determination of whether the field affected by the drift could remain certified as organic. OCIA determined that despite the fact that prohibited substances were found on the field, it would not suspend the field's organic certification.
Appellants appealed this decision to the National Organic Program (NOP), a program within the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA).1 In October of 2015, the NOP issued its decision and overruled OCIA's determination, suspending the organic certification of appellants' field for three years.
The following June, appellants filed claims for nuisance, negligence, and declaratory judgment in district court against respondent seeking damages for the loss of their contaminated crops and for their losses in connection with the suspension of their field's organic certification. The district court granted partial summary judgment for respondent and dismissed appellants' case entirely. Upon a joint request from the parties, the district court vacated its previous order, again dismissed the claims relating to the loss of organic certification, certified that dismissal for appeal, and stayed the remaining claims related to the destruction of appellants' alfalfa crop. This appeal follows.
In their complaint, appellants alleged nuisance and negligence claims, and requested a declaratory judgment that respondent's wrongdoing caused their field's suspension of organic certification. To succeed, all of these claims require appellants to establish that respondent was the proximate cause of their damages. Engler v. Ill. Farmers Ins. Co., 706 N.W.2d 764, 767 (Minn. 2005) (); Highview N. Apartments v. Ramsey County, 323 N.W.2d 65, 70 (Minn. 1982) (). The district court dismissed these claims on the ground that under Johnson v. Paynesville Farmers Union Coop. Oil Co., appellants could not establish causation as a matter of law. 817 N.W.2d 693, 712 (Minn. 2012).
"We review the grant of summary judgment de novo to determine 'whether there are genuine issues of material fact and whether the district court erred in its application of the law.'" Montemayor v. Sebright Prods., Inc., 898 N.W.2d 623, 628 (Minn. 2017) (quoting Stringer v. Minn. Vikings Football Club, LLC, 705 N.W.2d 746, 754 (Minn. 2005)). "We view the evidence in the light most favorable to the party against whom summary judgment was granted." STAR Ctrs., Inc. v. Faegre & Benson, L.L.P., 644 N.W.2d 72, 76-77 (Minn. 2002).
Appellants ask us to disregard binding precedent from the Minnesota Supreme Court, to defer to the NOP's determination that the pesticide drift caused their field's organic certification to be suspended, and to recognize a new remedy for organic farmerswho lose their organic certification based on pesticide drift. But we are not free to do any of those things.
Statutory background
Organic farming in the United States is regulated under the Organic Foods Production Act of 1990, 7 U.S.C. §§ 6501-6524 (2012) (OFPA), and the related federal regulations in the NOP, 7 C.F.R. § 205 (2018). One purpose of the OFPA is "to establish national standards governing the marketing of certain agricultural products as organically produced products." 7 U.S.C. § 6501(1). States are free to adopt these federal standards, or they may impose more restrictive standards to govern food products that are labeled as organic. 7 U.S.C. § 6507(b)(1). Minnesota has adopted the OFPA and the NOP to regulate the sale of organic food products. Minn. Stat. § 31.925 (2018).
Under federal statutes and regulations, a producer may only market crops as organic if the producer is certified by an organic certifying agent. 7 U.S.C. § 6503(d) (); 7 C.F.R. §§ 205.100, 205.102 (). A requirement for certification is that the producer must comply with the NOP. 7 C.F.R. § 205.400(a).
Once a producer is certified to sell products labeled as organic, the OFPA and NOP set guidelines for processes (see, e.g., 7 U.S.C. § 6508), farmland (see, e.g., 7 C.F.R. § 205.202 (b)), and crops (see, e.g., 7 U.S.C. § 6511 (c)) to ensure continued compliance. Among other requirements, and central to this case, the NOP requires that farmland where crops are grown that are intended to be sold as organic must, "Have had no prohibitedsubstances . . . applied to it for a period of 3 years immediately preceding harvest of the crop." 7 C.F.R. § 205.202(b).
2012 Johnson case
All of appellants' arguments are foreclosed by a single case—a case previously brought against another company that had sprayed pesticides in a field next to appellants' field. Johnson, 817 N.W.2d at 693. Johnson involved a very similar claim to the one before us; it involved a claim regarding pesticide drift that resulted in appellants having to destroy a portion of their crops and temporarily losing organic certification for a portion of their farmland. Id. at 696-97. In relevant part, appellants raised claims for nuisance and negligence based on their farmland's organic certification being suspended for three years, because under federal regulations when conventional pesticides drifted onto their farmland, the pesticides were "applied to" the farmland. Id. at 706-07 (quoting 7 C.F.R. § 205.202(b)). We had ruled that the passive phrase "applied to" in the regulation included both intentional and unintentional application of pesticides to the farmland by either the producer or third parties. Johnson v. Paynesville Farmers Union Coop. Oil Co., 802 N.W.2d 383, 390 (Minn. App. 2011), aff'd in part and rev'd in part, 817 N.W.2d 693 (Minn. 2012).
The Minnesota Supreme Court reversed this holding, and held that the phrase "applied to" in the federal regulation unambiguously applied only to intentional behavior by the producer of organic products. Johnson, 817 N.W.2d at 710. In effect, the Minnesota Supreme Court held that the regulatory language "applied to" unambiguously referred to an intentional application of pesticides by the organic producer. See id. (). The court also held that the federal regulation did not allow organic certifying agents any discretion to suspend organic certification in cases of pesticide drift. Id. at 712. The court concluded this issue by stating that, because the regulation unambiguously prevented the organic certifying agent from suspending organic certification based on pesticide drift, as a matter of law, pesticide drift could not be the proximate cause of an organic field's certification being suspended. Id. Instead, the certifying agent was the proximate...
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