Both sides found something to be happy about in a federal judge’s ruling last week in a class-action lawsuit seeking damages from lost sales and reduced prices as a result of China’s rejection of corn shipments from the U.S. in November 2013. U.S. District Judge John Lungstrum, in Kansas City, Kansas, rejected the basis for a nationwide class on the plaintiffs’ …
A Minnesota judge will let some farmers seek punitive damages against the Syngenta seed company for selling genetically modified corn seeds before China approved imports of crops grown from them. In an order unsealed Tuesday, Hennepin County District Judge Thomas Sipkins wrote that there’s evidence Syngenta knew the risks of commercializing Viptera and Duracade corn containing a trait that …
A class-action lawsuit against Syngenta regarding rejected exports is likely to head to trial next year, as scheduled. Online publication Agri-Pulse reports the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals declined to review a lower court’s certification order, allowing the lawsuit to proceed. Syngenta called the appeals court ruling “one step in a long process.” Multiple classes of farmers within the lawsuit …
Federal regulators might have green-lighted the $44 billion acquisition of Syngenta AG (SYT) by China National Chemical Corp., but Syngenta still has unsettled business to tend to. Notably, its rocky relationship with farmers. According to a recent court filing, a U.S. district court judge in Kansas ruled that the numerous lawsuits brought against Syngenta by U.S. farmers over sales of biotech …
Hundreds of lawsuits against seed company Syngenta could evolve into a major class-action and involve almost every corn farmer in the country, National Public Radio reports. China rejected some American corn imports in 2013 because they contained the Viptera trait, produced by Syngenta, which had not yet been approved for sale in China. Lawyers have filed many cases on behalf of farmers seeking …