The call came from a rice farmer: His long-grain crop had been contaminated by genetically modified rice developed by Bayer CropScience. He wasn’t the only one — thousands of farmers had the same problem. This was a disaster because genetically modified rice didn’t meet standards for human consumption set by the U.S. government and European authorities. Across the country, this contamination had depressed the value of the U.S. rice crop by hundreds of millions of dollars.
The farmers won vindication four years later, in November 2010, in the form of settlement agreements to federal multidistrict and companion state litigation totaling $750 million. Hare, Wynn, Newell & Newton of Birmingham, Ala., and an alliance of plaintiffs’ firms that had never worked together before brokered the settlement.
