Jason Knutson with Habush, Habush and Rottier joined Bryant to get him up to date on the progress of the litigation that corn producers have brought against Syngenta.
A few years back as many of you can remember the market price of corn was hovering around $7.00 bu and then all of a sudden the bottom seemed to fall out and the price fell to around $3.80, many people believe the cause was the fact that China closed its markets to US corn after Syngenta developed traits were found in shipments of grain that the country had imported. The reason for closing the markets was the fact that Syngenta’s newly developed traits were yet to be approved by the Chinese government
The trademarked name of one of those traits that China found was Viptera, a ground breaking new GMO that was developed to help producers save production costs and in return bring back more dollars to the farmer, the problem was that while farmers were producing corn using the Viptera trait they were also under the impression that it would be approved in plenty of time to sell anywhere.
Jason Knutson and many other attorneys are representing corn producers in an effort to gain back money that was lost when the market fell apart, we are not talking about a few million dollars, we are talking astronomical loses that farmers throughout the US felt.
Knutson says that later this month the first of three “Bell Weather” trials is set to begin. He explains that these act almost a “test run” to see how juries react to witness testimony and will serve as a reference to how other trials are likely to go. The trials are going along at a good pace as far as class action lawsuits go and Jason expects the first trial to last about a month.
Knutson says, “Corn producers have a good case and if they have any questions, to contact an attorney to gain all the facts”
Listen to Bryant and Attorney Jason Knutson’s interview by clicking the link below
