Saturday, September 10, 2011
(graphic: www.too2late.com)
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals refused to cut a group of Idaho farmers any slack in their fight against the federal government for contaminating their crops with a powerful herbicide.
The issue dates back to 1999-2000, when the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) sprayed Oust on 70,000 acres of Idaho public lands in order to kill off cheatgrass, a non-native species that’s been known to fuel wildfires. Some of the herbicide blew onto nearby farms, causing damage to crops belonging to 134 farmers.
The farmers took BLM to court, and a Boise federal judge ruled the government was 40% responsible for infecting thousands of acres of private fields.
When BLM appealed, however, the Ninth Circuit reversed the decision on grounds that the farmers had filed their case six months and one day after the agency had denied their administrative claims.
Legally, they had six months exactly to file. So the one day extra invalidated their entire lawsuit, the judges ruled.
-Noel Brinkerhoff
A Day Late & Now $17 Million Short (by Tim Hull, Courthouse News Service)
Timm Adams v. United States (Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals) (pdf)
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