The Supreme Court on Wednesday created a wide opening for consumers of weed-killing and pest-killing products to sue manufacturers under state law for defectively designing their products, and failing to live up to their promises of what the products will do. The 7-2 decision cleared the way for Texas peanut farmers to proceed with an array of state-law claims based on their contention that a weed-killer named “Strongarm” destroyed their crop without killing the weeds.
The Court, in the decision in Bates v. Dow Agrosciences (docket 03-388), left open the possibility that the Texas farmers may yet be able to pursue other claims against Dow. It said it did not have enough information to decide whether those other claims had been pre-empted by the federal regulatory law on pesticides and insecticides. It sent those back to lower federal courts.
Clearing up a dispute among Circuit Courts on whether the federal regulatory law on crop-treating products left the states with much, if any, authority to regulate those products, the Court came down on the side of retaining significant opportunity to bring state-law claims without running afoul of the federal statute.
In the Bates case, the Court found that the farmers could go ahead in state court with claims of defective design of “Strongarm,” defective manufacture, negligent testing, breach of express warranty and at least some claims under Texas consumer protection law. It left it to lower courts to decide whether federal law barred the farmers’ claims of fraud and negligent failure-to-warn about the limitations of the product when used on peanut crops.
“The long history of tort litigation against manufacturers of poisonous substances adds force to the basic presumption against pre-emption,” the Court said in its first decision on the preemption question in connection with the federal insecticide law. “If Congress had intended to deprive injured parties of a long available form of compensation, it surely would have expressed that intent more clearly.”
The Court, speaking through Justice John Paul Stevens, rejected the claims of the federal government and of the Strongarm manufacturer that a ruling allowing state claims to proceed would produce a “crazy-quilt” of conflicting state regulation, especially on the labels put on pesticide and insecticide products.
The decision vacated a Fifth Circuit ruling finding preemption on all claims. The Fifth Circuit had ruled that federal law bars any state-law claim that would lead the manufacturer to alter its product label. The Court explicitly rejected the Circuit Court’s theory that merely inducing a manufacture to modify a product label would contradict the federal law.
In the Court’s only other decision on Wednesday, the Court ruled 5-4 that a Pennsylvania inmate serving a life sentence filed his federal habeas application too late. A post-conviction claim filed in state court, found by a state court to be out of time, does not stop the running of the time for filing a federal habeas petition under AEDPA, the Court ruled in Pace v. DiGuglielmo (03-9627). Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist wrote the majority opinion.
That decision resolves an issue the Court had left undecided in 2000 in the case of Artuz v. Bennett.
The next decisions from the Court on pending cases may come next Monday.
CLICK HERE FOR FULL VERSION OF THIS STORY