Michigan landowners’ long-shot lawsuit has high stakes for wind industry

An unlikely legal win by neighbors of a Michigan wind farm would have the potential to chill wind energy development in the state, legal experts say. A group of landowners filed suit in state court in August alleging a wind project near Lake Michigan in the Upper Peninsula is causing adverse health effects. These include sleep interruption and deprivation, stress, “extreme fatigue, anxiety and emotional distress.”Those claims will be difficult to prove, legal experts said, but if the landowners are successful it could have significant implications. That’s why clean energy groups are closely watching the case, which resurfaced in circuit court a month after being dismissed by a federal judge in July.