Sad Dismissal; The Case Against Monsanto

In light of prior wrong decisions and rulings by the  Honorable Judge Buchwald, perhaps she is wrong this time as well? Or maybe it’s possible that in the push to get Monsanto exposed and held accountable for damage done to our food supply, activists got carried away and didn’t put together and air-tight case against Monsanto.

Either way, I do find it odd that a court would cite a corporation’s “long standing commitment blah, blah, blah” as it almost makes the court appear to be a spokesman for the corporation. Considering Monsanto’s history of cross-overs from executives to public officials, nothing would really surprise me anymore…

ST. LOUIS, Feb. 27, 2012 – Sacramento Bee - The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York has officially dismissed a lawsuit brought by The Organic Seed Growers and Trade Association (OSGATA) and dozens of other plaintiff growers and organizations against Monsanto Company.

OSGATA and plaintiffs in the case alleged that they did not want to grow crops containing Monsanto’s biotechnology traits but feared a patent-infringement lawsuit in the event the company’s traits happened to enter their fields inadvertently through, for example, cross-pollination. However, the court rejected the lawsuit finding that OSGATA and plaintiffs had engaged in a “transparent effort to create a controversy where none exists.”  The Court also held that there was no “case or controversy” on the matter as Monsanto had not taken any action or even suggested to take any action against any of the plaintiffs.

In its ruling, the court cited Monsanto’s long-standing public commitment that “it has never been, nor will it be, Monsanto policy to exercise its patent rights where trace amounts of our patented seeds or traits are present in a farmer’s fields as a result of inadvertent means.” 

U.S. District Judge Naomi Buchwald found that plaintiffs’ allegations were “unsubstantiated … given that not one single plaintiff claims to have been so threatened.”  The ruling also found that the plaintiffs had “overstate[d] the magnitude of [Monsanto's] patent enforcement,” noting thatMonsanto’s average of roughly 13 lawsuits per year “is hardly significant when compared to the number of farms in the United States, approximately two million.”  Full Story

Related articles

• Monsanto prevails in suit brought by organic growers (reuters.com)
• Fed Court dismisses OSGATA vs Monsanto; enables genetic contamination of organics (mountainrepublic.net)

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