Bill would limit nuisance suits against Mo. farmers

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. – Advocates for Missouri farmers are redoubling their efforts to push through a law this session that would provided farmers greater protection from nuisance lawsuits.

A bill introduced Thursday in the House would seek to cap the amount of damages that could be awarded to those filing nuisance suits against Missouri farmers.

House Bill 209, introduced by Rep. Casey Guernsey, R-Bethany, would give statutory definition to an established judicial precedent that delineates between permanent and temporary nuisances.

"This is a real opportunity for the legislature to be able to make some significant changes that could be very helpful and increase the protection of those farmers and ranchers who are doing the right thing," said Leslie Holloway, director of state and local governmental affairs for the Missouri Farm Bureau Federation, the largest agriculture advocacy group in the state.

The bill arises from farmers' concerns that temporary nuisance claims allow complainants to extract inordinate amounts of money because there is no limit to the damages that can be awarded.

Holloway said suits pertaining to Missouri pork farms were a major catalyst for seeking the new protections.

Under the proposed law, damages for permanent nuisances, which are deemed unalterable, cannot exceed the fair market value of a plaintiff's effected property. Damages for temporary nuisances, which the court deems capable of alteration to alleviate the nuisance, are not to exceed the loss of fair market rental value of the plaintiff's property.

The changes would supplement the right-to-farm law enacted in 1982. That law protects farmers from nuisance lawsuits, but only if their agricultural operations existed before those filing the nuisance complaint owned their property. The original law was intended to protect the interest of farmers from lawsuits resulting from urban expansion. It does not protect farmers from environmental or injury suits.

The Farm Bureau says the law is necessary to help protect newer agricultural operations from being unfairly penalized, but opponents of the law say it would deprive neighbors of rightful claims resulting from agricultural nuisances.

A similar measure introduced in the House late last session failed to pass.